THE  AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 


THE   AUTHORITY 

OF 

CRITICISM 

AND     OTHER    ESSAYS 


BY 

WILLIAM    P.  TRENT 

AUTHOR    OF 
ILLIAM    GILMORE   SIMMS,"     "JOHN    MILTON,"    ETC. 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1899 


Copyright,  1899, 
BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


Kntijtrsitg 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SQN,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


TO 

S.  S.  P.  PATTESON,  ESQ. 

Of  the  Richmond  {V a.)  Bar, 
AS    A     TOKEN     OF     FRIENDSHIP. 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

ALTHOUGH  the  papers  contained  in  this  vol- 
ume were  written  from  time  to  time  and  for 
special  purposes,  they  will,  I  trust,  be  found 
to  possess  in  the  main  a  unity  sufficient  to 
warrant  the  reader  in  regarding  them  as 
something  more  than  a  mere  collection  of 
detached  essays.  I  am  not  presumptuous 
enough  to  claim  that  in  them  I  have  outlined 
a  critical  philosophy,  and  given  certain  appli- 
cations of  it;  but  I  think  I  may  fairly  say 
that  I  have  endeavored  to  discuss  some  im- 
portant critical  and  literary  problems  which 
must  be  satisfactorily  dealt  with  before  an  ade- 
quate critical  philosophy  can  be  developed. 

I  suppose  that  few  people  will  be  rash 
enough  to  assert  that  such  a  philosophy  ex- 
ists already,  and  I  hope  that  many  will  agree 
that  unless  it  is  developed  in  the  future 
critics  are  likely  to  continue  their  uncom- 
fortable and  undignified  floundering  in  the 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

bogs  of  dogmatism  and  impressionism.  Act- 
ing on  these  suppositions,  I  have  ventured  to 
investigate  as  well  as  I  could  such  important 
topics  —  fundamental  as  they  plainly  are  to 
a  critical  philosophy  —  as  The  Sanction  and 
Scope  of  the  Authority  of  Criticism ;  The 
Nature  of  Literature,  with  particular  regard 
to  its  emotional  basis ;  The  Relations  of  Lit- 
erature to  Morals ;  and  The  Best  Methods  of 
Teaching  Literature  in  the  Schools. 

To  these  mainly  theoretical  but  in  part 
practical  papers  I  have  added  a  few  others, 
not  merely  to  lend  variety  to  the  volume, 
but  more  particularly  to  illustrate  in  a 
somewhat  concrete  way  the  truth  of  princi- 
ples contended  for  in  the  group  of  essays 
just  specified.  For  example,  the  papers  on 
Tennyson  and  Musset  and  on  the  Byron 
Revival  will  be  found  to  bear  upon  the  im- 
portant topic  of  the  emotional  basis  of  litera- 
ture. They  were  written,  however,  with  no 
intention  to  prove  a  thesis,  but  simply  as 
critical  studies. 

In  conclusion,  I  must  assure  my  reader 
that  I  arrogate  to  myself  no  discoveries,  and 
that  I  am  aware  that  I  am  probably  as  far 
from  having  an  adequate  critical  philosophy 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

as  he  is.  All  I  can  positively  affirm  is  that 
there  is  need  of  such  a  philosophy,  and 
that  honest  groping  for  one  on  the  part  of 
men  who  have  a  high  appreciation  of  the 
critic's  function  is  perhaps  the  best  means 
of  attaining  it. 

W.  P.  TRENT. 

THE  UNIVERSITY  or  THE  SOUTH, 

SEWANEE,  TENN.,  June  7, 1899. 


*#*  Thanks  are  hereby  returned  to  the  editors  of 
The  Forum,  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  The  Bookman,  for 
permission  to  reprint  the  first  and  sixth,  the  seventh,  and 
the  ninth  essays  respectively. 

G. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM i 

APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 35 

LITERATURE  AND  MORALS 97 

THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 141 

ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 187 

THE  BYRON  REVIVAL 203 

TEACHING  THE  SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE      .     .  237 

MR.  HOWELLS  AND  ROMANTICISM   .     .     .     .  257 

TENNYSON  AND  MUSSET  ONCE  MORE    .     .     .  269 


I 

THE   AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 


I 

THE   AUTHORITY  OF 
CRITICISM 


I 


THE  comparatively  recent  visit  of  M.  Ferdi- 
nand Brunetiere  to  this  country  has  stimu- 
lated among  us  fresh  interest  in  a  question 
that  is  almost  as  old  as  the  hills,  and  as 
varied  in  the  forms  it  assumes ;  to  wit,  What 
is  the  weight  of  authority  carried  by  criti- 
cism? Is  there  such  a  thing,  men  are  asking 
themselves,  as  a  science  of  criticism,  or  is  all 
criticism  at  bottom  merely  the  expression  of 
an  individual  opinion,  unsupported,  or  sup- 
ported in  varying  degrees,  by  other  individual 
opinions?  If  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to 
eliminate  the  personal  equation  in  strictly 
scientific  experiments,  is  it  worth  while,  they 
ask,  to  try  to  eliminate  it  from  our  studies  in 
the  semi-sciences,  such  as  ethics  and  history, 
or  in  the  arts?  In  other  words,  is  not  criti- 
cism a  present,  individual  act;  ought  not  the 
critic  to  say  "  I  "  instead  of"  we  "  ;  and  is  not 
every  one  of  us  that  reads  a  book  or  looks  at 
3 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

a  picture  as  much  master  of  his  own  likes  and 
dislikes  as  the  typical  Englishman  is  lord  of 
his  own  castle? 

It  is  plain  that  this  question  is  almost  as 
old  as  the  race ;  for  it  is  fundamentally  the 
question  men  have  been  asking  themselves 
since  primitive  times,  since  the  very  first  at- 
tempt on  the  part  of  some  bold  innovator  to 
break  up  what  the  late  Mr.  Bagehot  aptly 
called  "the  cake  of  custom."  A  conscious, 
or  semi-conscious,  assertion  of  the  right  of  in- 
dividual judgment  is  the  basis  of  every  step  of 
progress  that  humanity  has  made  ;  and,  speak- 
ing loosely,  the  history  of  civilization  is  the 
history  of  the  emancipation  of  the  individual 
will  and  judgment.  The  authority  of  society 
has  not  indeed  been  abrogated  ;  but  it  retains 
the  force  of  law  over  our  actions  only,  and 
principally  on  utilitarian  grounds.  "Society 
thinks  so ;  therefore  a  thing  is  right "  is  a 
dictum  that  will  stand  in  the  way  of  few  lib- 
eral-minded men  in  this  year  of  grace. 

But,  if  men  have  been  daring  to  tell  society 
for  centuries  that  it  is  in  error  with  regard  to 
this  or  that  point  of  ethics  or  politics,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  they  should  long  ago 
have  mustered  up  courage  to  tell  the  small 
cultivated  portion  of  society  not  only  that  it 
is  in  error  with  regard  to  particular  books 
4 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

and  objects  of  art,  but  that  it  is  in  error  in 
thinking  that  it  has  any  special  call  or  right 
to  pronounce  judgment  in  such  matters. 
This  is  precisely  what  Perrault  did  in  his 
famous  controversy  with  Boileau  over  the 
comparative  merits  of  the  ancients  and  the 
moderns. 

About  two  centuries  have  elapsed  since 
Perrault  finished  the  third  part  of  his  "  Paral- 
lele  "  ;  and  the  controversy,  with  a  somewhat 
shifted  base,  is  still  raging  in  France,  with 
MM.  Brunetiere  and  Lemaitre  as  protagon- 
ists. It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  Homer 
and  Virgil  versus  Chapelain,  or  even  whether 
in  translation  Pindar  is  intelligible  to  the  wife 
of  a  worthy  French  magistrate;  but  it  is 
pretty  largely  a  question  of  the  importance 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  as  compared  with 
the  nineteenth,  and  of  the  benefit  to  the  stu- 
dent of  classifying  properly  a  work  of  art, 
compared  with  the  benefit  to  be  derived  from 
treating  such  a  work  as  an  object  of  aes- 
thetic or  psychologic  interest  merely.  In 
other  words,  the  chief  critical  problem  which 
the  French  mind  is  endeavoring  to  solve  to- 
day is  a  more  complex  form  of  the  problem 
with  which  it  was  struggling  two  centuries 
ago,  and  contains  precisely  the  same  elements 
that  all  great  mental  problems  involve,  viz., 
5 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

the  value  or  worthlessness  of  what  the  present 
has  preserved  from  the  past,  and  the  rights 
of  the  individual,  as  opposed  to  the  claims  of 
society. 

Yet  the  controversy  between  the  ancients 
and  the  moderns  was  not  confined  to  France  ; 
indeed,  that  country,  as  M.  Brunetiere  shows, 
took  up  the  question  in  a  curiously  belated 
fashion.  And  in  like  manner  the  present 
controversy  between  collective  and  individu- 
alistic, or,  if  we  prefer,  academic  and  im- 
pressionist, criticism,  is  not  confined  to  the 
partisans  of  MM.  Brunetiere  and  Lemaitre. 
In  England  the  late  Matthew  Arnold  did 
doughty  battle  for  the  cause  of  ordered 
criticism  ;  and  Professor  Saintsbury  has  for 
years  been  doing  his  best  to  wave  the  flag 
of  the  impressionists.  In  America  Lowell's 
influence  was,  on  the  whole,  conservative ; 
while  Mr.  Hamlin  Garland,  able  and  sincere 
writer  though  he  be,  and  most  of  the  strenu- 
ous admirers  of  Walt  Whitman  have  borne 
the  standard  of  individualism  to  a  quite  im- 
pregnable position  —  whether  on  the  heights 
of  reason  or  among  the  fens  of  folly  must  be 
determined  later. 

But,  over  and  above  the  labors  of  individual 
critics,  there  are  two  forces  at  work  in  all  parts 
of  the  Western  world  that  continue  to  carry 
6 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

on  this  conflict,  often  unconsciously.  These 
two  forces  are  the  teachers  and  the  reporters. 
Nearly  all  persons  who  engage  in  any  form 
of  teaching  are  interested  in  preserving  the 
sway  of  authority,  and  may  be  counted  on 
the  side  of  conservative  criticism.  On  the 
other  hand,  men  whose  business  it  is  prima- 
rily to  amuse  and  interest,  and  only  seconda- 
rily to  instruct,  society,  are  not  led  to  uphold 
the  sway  of  authority  (save  in  matters  of  re- 
ligion and  politics  about  which  their  patrons 
may  be  sensitive)  simply  because  what  holds 
by  the  past  is  not  likely  to  prove  so  interest- 
ing as  what  touches  the  present  or  looks  to 
the  future. 

Reporters,  then,  —  and  the  term  practically 
includes  all  writers  who  minister  to  public 
curiosity,  —  may  be  counted,  n  most  cases,  on 
the  side  of  individualistic  criticism.  That  is 
to  say,  the  reportorial  spirit  may  be  counted  ; 
for  newspaper  critics  per  se  are  usually  hide- 
bound sticklers  for  academic  methods.  As 
the  reporter,  owing  to  the  waning  force  of 
traditional  checks  upon  a  mixed  and  rapidly 
evolving  society,  plays  quite  a  part  among 
us,  and  is  likely  to  gain  power  rather  than 
lose  it  in  the  near  future,  it  follows  that  im- 
pressionist criticism  will  not  lose  ground 
in  America  for  some  time  to  come,  even  if  it 
7 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

does  not  grow  rampant.  On  the  other  hand, 
as  our  teachers  and  journalistic  critics  are 
rarely  possessed  of  broad  culture,  the  real 
force  and  value  of  the  academic  principles 
they  stand  for  tend  to  become  enfeebled  and 
obscured.  Hence,  it  is  not  so  much  a  battle, 
of  the  critics  that  we  are  likely  to  observe  in 
America,  as  a  metie. 

If  all  this  be  true,  it  would  seem  to  be  worth 
our  while  to  endeavor  to  determine  where  the 
truth  lies  with  regard  to  this  vexed  problem 
of  the  authority  of  criticism.  If  M.  Brune- 
tiere  is  right,  and  M.  Lemaitre  wrong,  it  will 
be  well  to  try  to  check  our  present  propulsion 
toward  impressionism.  If  M.  Brunetiere  is 
wrong,  —  I  use  his  name  only  because  he  is 
plainly  the  foremost  living  representative  of 
academic  criticism,  —  then  we  may  feel  easy 
about  the  go-as-you-please  methods  of  some 
of  our  critics,  and  may  give  ourselves  up  to 
quite  a  hedonistic  cult  of  frank  individualism. 
If,  however,  both  of  these  distinguished  men 
are  right  in  part,  and  both  are  wrong  in  part, 
it  is  obvious  that  it  all  the  more  behooves  us 
to  seek  to  establish  the  proper  limits  of  the 
principles  of  criticism  each  strives  to  apply; 
for  the  more  complex  our  principles  of 
thought  and  action,  the  more  chance  there  is 
of  our  going  dangerously  astray  in  their 
8 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

application.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add 
that  a  presumption  lies  in  favor  of  the  last 
hypothesis,  not  only  because  extremes  are 
rarely  safe,  but  because  two  great  critics,  or 
two  numerous  factions  of  critics,  are  not 
likely  to  be  enthusiastic  supporters  of  oppos- 
ing principles  without  having  positive  reasons 
of  weight  to  actuate  and  sustain  them  in  their 
contentions. 


II 


OUR  first  question  is,  then,  whether  M.  Brune- 
tiere  is  right  when  he  asks  us  to  distrust  our 
individual  judgment  about  a  piece  of  litera- 
ture, and  to  make  a  study  of  criticism  and 
literary  history  in  order  to  discover  the 
proper  value  and  rank  of  the  work  to  be 
judged,  before  we  venture  to  form  or  express 
a  settled  opinion  concerning  it  This  is 
practically  what  he  does  ask,  although  he 
lays  most  stress  on  a  particular  demand ;  to 
wit,  that  we  shall  pay  special  attention  to  the 
matter  of  genres  —  that  is,  to  the  different 
forms  or  categories  of  literature.  It  is  also 
what  Matthew  Arnold  asked,  although  he  laid 
most  stress  on  the  matter  of  general  culture. 
But  M.  Lemaitre  demurs  at  once.  He  says, 
in  substance :  You  are  leaving  out  of  sight 
9 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

the  main  object  for  which  men  write  and 
read  books,  viz.,  to  receive  pleasure  and, 
partly,  to  give  it.  Your  abstract  genres, 
your  epics  and  dramas,  creatures  of  your  own 
brains,  become  your  tyrants  and  doom  you 
to  hopeless  drudgery.  It  is  no  longer  pos- 
sible for  you  to  take  up  a  book  and  simply 
enjoy  it.  I,  too,  could  do  your  kind  of 
criticism  if  I  had  a  mind  to ;  but  if  I  did,  I 
should  be  turned  into  a  solemn  magistrate, 
thinking  forever  of  the  black  cap  I  must  soon 
put  on.  —  Now  this  demurrer  has  plainly  its 
basis  in  common  sense,  and  is  a  wholesome 
corrective  of  the  claims  of  the  academic 
critic  when  these  take  an  extreme  form.  It 
is  obvious  that  certain  minds  will  always 
rebel  at  a  hard  and  fast  code  of  rules  for 
critical  reading,  and  that  most  minds  will  rebel 
sometimes.  Not  only  are  there  books  that  we 
want  to  read  without  analysis,  but  there  are 
times  when  we  prefer  simply  to  read  a  book 
that  at  other  times  we  should  be  glad  to  an- 
alyze. We  do  not  care  to  analyze  The  Pris- 
oner of  Zenda :  it  would  scarcely  pay  us  to 
analyze  it,  although  one  enterprising  student 
of  architecture  has  drawn  an  elaborate  plan 
of  the  remarkable  castle.  Yet  we  were  all 
eager  to  read  it ;  and  we  are  most  of  us  glad 
now  that  we  did  read  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
10 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

we  ought  at  one  time  or  another  to  make  a 
careful  analytic  study  of  Shakspere's  Sonnets; 
yet  there  are  some  of  us  who  like  to  have  a 
pocket  edition  of  these  divine  poems  with  us 
on  a  railway  journey,  when  careful  study  is 
plainly  out  of  the  question. 

Again,  we  are  constantly  repeating  to 
young  people  the  injunction  that  they  should 
begin  to  read  classical  poems  and  novels  as 
soon  as  they  are  able  to  comprehend  them; 
but  we  do  not  say  at  the  same  time  that  they 
must  wait  until  they  understand  the  main 
facts  about  the  "  evolution  of  genres  "  before 
they  form  an  opinion  of  the  general  value  and 
interest  to  themselves  of  the  literature  with 
which  they  have  been  brought  in  contact. 
In  this  case,  however,  we  do  apply  a  part  at 
least,  of  M.  Brunetiere's  critical  philosophy; 
for  we  rely  chiefly  on  the  verdicts  of  past 
generations  in  our  choice  of  the  classics  we 
recommend  to  the  young.  Still,  it  remains 
true  that  the  most  critically  minded  of  us  can- 
not be  critical  always,  and  that  large  classes 
of  readers  can  never  be  critical  in  any  true 
sense  of  the  word.  So  M.  Brunetiere's  prin- 
ciples hold  good  for  only  a  small  body  of 
readers,  and  not  at  all  times  and  seasons  even 
for  these.  It  is  idle,  however,  to  think  that 
he  has  ever  meant  them  to  be  taken  strictly 
II 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

by  the  majority,  by  what  we  call  politely  the 
reading  public ;  yet  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
they  may  be  laid  to  heart  by  every  one,  and 
inculcated  even  in  a  very  young  child. 


Ill 


REDUCED  to  their  lowest  terms,  the  princi- 
ples for  which  most  academic  critics  stand 
are,  I  think,  three  in  number:  (i)  That  due 
weight  should  be  given  to  the  collective 
wisdom  of  the  past  and  the  trained  knowl- 
edge of  the  present ;  (2)  that  there  are  more 
or  less  ascertainable  degrees  of  value  in  the 
various  genres  of  artistic  production ;  and 
(3)  that  no  art  can  be  absolutely  divorced 
from  ethics. 

It  follows  at  once  from  the  assumption  of 
these  three  principles  that  if  it  can  be  shown 
that  a  special  kind  of  poetry,  say  the  epic,  is 
of  greater  value  (that  is,  makes  a  higher  and 
wider  appeal  to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men 
in  general)  than  another  kind,  say  the  elegy, 
it  is  not  merely  a  mistake  of  judgment  to 
prefer  the  latter  to  the  former,  but  also, 
where  sufficient  knowledge  is  available, —  a 
point  which  is  covered  by  the  first  principle 
given  above,  —  an  ethical  lapse  of  a  more  or 
12 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

less  venial  character.  In  fine,  if  there  were 
such  a  person  as  a  purely  academic  critic  of 
perfect  fearlessness,  he  would  affirm  that  to 
prefer  Gray's  Elegy  to  Paradise  Lost  is 
not  only  foolish,  but  wrong:  for  this  is  the 
sense  in  which  he  accepts  the  dictum  that 
art  cannot  be  divorced  from  ethics;  it  being 
quite  possible  for  an  academic  critic  to 
acquiesce  in  the  truth  of  the  maxim  "  Art 
for  art's  sake,"  provided  it  be  interpreted 
rationally.  In  other  words  the  academic 
critic,  while  he  may  not  judge  works  of  art 
from  a  preconceived  ethical  point  of  view,  and 
demand  that  they  serve  some  definite  ethical 
purpose,  will,  if  he  be  consistent,  assert  em- 
phatically that,  as  no  judgment  can  be  formed 
without  entailing  some  corresponding  respon- 
sibility, and  as  objects  of  art  must  be  judged 
before  we  can  determine  whether  the  emotions 
produced  by  them  are  really  wholesome  or 
harmful,  it  follows  that  art,  by  entailing  re- 
sponsibilities upon  all  who  are  brought  into 
contact  with  it,  —  and  what  experience  in  life 
does  not  entail  upon  us  the  responsibility  of 
determining  whether  it  be  wholesome  or 
harmful?  —  cannot  in  the  last  analysis  be 
divorced  from  ethics. 

If,  now,  it  be  urged  that  what  we  ought  to 
examine  and  pass  judgment  upon  is  not  the 
13 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

object  of  art  that  produces  emotions  in  us, 
but  ourselves  who  experience  these  emotions, 
the  critic  will  reply  that  he  has  always  main- 
tained the  necessity  for  self-examination  in 
aesthetic  matters,  but  that,  if  a  doubt  be  im- 
plied with  regard  to  the  possibility  of  obtain- 
ing valid  objective  judgments  in  the  domain 
of  the  arts,  such  doubt  must  apply  as  well 
to  the  ultimate  validity  of  all  other  objective 
judgments,  with  the  result  that  we  are  landed 
either  in  pure  idealism  or  in  universal  scepti- 
cism. An  objection,  however,  that  is  so  far- 
reaching  is  practically  no  objection  at  all. 

But  certainly  this  strange  doctrine,  that  it 
is  in  some  way  wrong  to  prefer  a  poem,  a 
picture,  or  a  statue  of  an  inferior  genre  to 
one  of  a  superior  genre,  will  not  be  admitted 
by  many  persons  without  considerable  pro- 
test. Yet,  if  it  be  once  granted  that  there 
are  higher  and  lower  forms  of  art,  and  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  every  man,  not  merely  to  act 
on  the  highest  level  possible,  but  also  to 
expose  his  soul  to  the  highest  influences 
possible,  it  follows  that  to  prefer  wilfully  the 
lower  to  the  higher  in  any  particular  is, 
strictly  speaking,  an  ethical  lapse.  Many 
of  us  are,  of  course,  absolved  from  all  blame 
in  this  regard  on  account  of  our  ignorance  in 
the  premises :  those  of  us  who  are  not  igno- 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

rant  have  generally  tried  to  justify  ourselves 
by  affirming  that,  while  there  may  be  genres, 
there  is  no  proof  that  one  is  higher  than 
another;  that  it  is  a  mere  assumption  of  a 
priori  criticism  to  say,  for  example,  that  a 
fine  ode  like  Gray's  Progress  of  Poesy  is 
per  se  superior  to  the  same  poet's  Elegy 
Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard,  —  an 
opinion  held,  perhaps,  both  by  Gray  himself 
and  by  Matthew  Arnold. 

The  answer  made  by  the  academic  critic 
to  this  contention  will  naturally  bring  into 
question  his  first  principle,  viz.,  that  due 
weight  should  be  given  to  the  collective 
wisdom  of  the  past  and  to  the  trained  knowl- 
edge of  the  present.  The  ode,  he  will  say, 
stands  at  the  head  of  all  forms  of  lyrical 
poetry,  because  in  it  the  subjective  emotions 
of  the  poet  are  fused  to  a  white  heat.  The 
ancients  regarded  the  ode  as  the  greatest  of 
lyrical  forms ;  and  modern  students  of  poetry 
have  as  yet  seen  no  reason  to  abandon  this 
view.  The  finest  ode  of  Pindar  ought  then 
to  be  superior  to  any  elegy  of  Mimnermus, 
and  Gray's  ode  should  outrank  his  Elegy, 
unless  in  the  former  poem  the  poet  has 
fallen  below  the  level  proper  to  the  genre 
selected,  and  in  the  latter  poem  has  risen  to 
an  equal  or  greater  degree,  —  a  phenomenon 
15 


AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 

which  seems  to  have  occurred,  if  the  two 
pieces  be  regarded  as  wholes,  and  which 
both  explains  and  justifies  the  popular  verdict 
in  the  matter. 

This  answer  shows  us  at  once  how  inter- 
dependent the  three  principles  of  the  aca- 
demic critic  really  are.  If  there  are  genres 
of  higher  and  lower  value,  then  it  is  our  duty 
to  try  to  put  ourselves  in  greater  sympathy 
with  the  higher  than  with  the  lower;  or,  in 
other  words,  we  cannot,  if  we  would,  divorce 
art  from  ethics.  But  we  cannot  establish 
our  contention  that  there  are  superior  and 
inferior  genres,  unless  we  insist  that  due 
weight  be  given  to  that  collective  wisdom  of 
the  past  which  has  established  and  differenti- 
ated the  various  genres.  It  is  the  conscious, 
or  unconscious,  perception  of  the  interde- 
pendence of  these  principles  of  academic 
criticism  that  has  led  the  impressionists,  who 
generally  desire  to  escape  from  ethical  re- 
sponsibility, to  attack  with  relentless  vigor 
that  deference  to  the  judgment  of  the  past 
inculcated  by  the  first  principle.  They  can- 
not well  attack  the  second  part  of  this  prin- 
ciple, that  due  weight  should  be  given  to  the 
trained  knowledge  of  the  present;  for  this 
would  be  to  undermine  the  authority  of  their 
own  privileged  order  of  mandarins:  they 
16 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

can,   however,    say    much    about    a    servile 
dependence  on  an  effete  past. 

But,  if  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  ages 
be  of  paramount  importance  in  ethics,  philo- 
sophy, law,  and  all  studies  in  which  fresh 
material  for  experimentation  is  not  being 
continually  introduced,  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  its  authority,  within  reasonable  limits, 
can  be  questioned  with  regard  to  criticism. 
That  genres  exist  even  in  art  is  a  fact  as  well 
determined  as  the  existence  of  the  various 
mental  faculties.  That  we  do  not  know  the 
ultimate  nature  of  art  in  the  one  case,  or  of 
mind  in  the  other,  does  not  prove  that  we 
have  no  need  of  the  hypotheses  of  criticism 
and  of  metaphysics.  That  there  is  a  hier- 
archy of  genres  is  a  fact  as  well  proved  as 
that  there  is  a  hierarchy  of  mental  powers 
or  of  bodily  functions.1  To  cut  the  vEneid 

1  With  regard  to  this  important  matter  of  the  hierarchy 
of  the  genres  one  cannot  do  better  than  to  follow  Brune- 
tiere  in  quoting  Taine  :  "  Dans  le  monde  imaginaire,  comme 
dans  le  monde  reel,  il  y  a  des  rangs  divers  parce  qu'il  y 
a  des  valeurs  diverses.  Le  public  et  les  connaisseurs  as- 
signent  les  uns  et  estiment  les  autres.  Nous  n'avons  pas 
fait  autre  chose  depuis  cinq  ans,  en  parcourant  les  ecoles 
de  1'Italie,  des  Pays-Bas,  et  de  la  Grece.  Nous  avons 
toujours,  et  a  chaque  pas,  porte  des  jugements.  Sans  le 
savoir  nous  avions  en  main  un  instrument  de  mesure. 
Les  autres  hommes  sont  comme  nous,  et  en  critique  comme 
ailleurs  il  y  a  des  verites  acquises.  Chacun  reconnait 
2  i 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

out  of  Latin  literature  would  be  like  putting 
out  a  man's  eye  :  to  cut  out  Juvenal's  Satires 
would  be  like  amputating  a  finger.  "  Solvi- 
tur  inquirendo."  Ask  even  the  most  ram- 
pant impressionist  —  except,  perhaps,  the 
ultra-Whitmanite  —  which  he  would  rather 
have  written,  Shakspere's  dramas  or  Burns's 
songs,  Scott's  romances  or  Maupassant's  tales, 
Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall  or  Macaulay's 
Essays,  and  the  answer  will  nearly  always 
indicate  a  tacit  acceptance  of  the  theory  of 
a  hierarchy  of  genres.  "A  mere  instance  of 
the  force  of  convention,"  the  VVhitmanite 
might  say,  "  Walt  Whitman's  Leaves  of 
Grass  put  all  the  genres  to  the  blush,  and 
the  academic  critics,  too.  You  will  not  dare 
to  mention  Shakspere  and  Milton  in  the  same 
breath  with  him !  "  An  advocate  of  free 
love  might  make  just  such  a  reply  to  an 
argument  in  favor  of  monogamy. 

In    fact  it  can  be   easily  shown   that   the 
distinctions  and  gradations  sanctioned  by  the 

aujourd'hui  que  certains  poetes,  comme  Dante  et  Shakspere, 
certains  compositeurs,  comme  Mozart  et  Beethoven,  tien- 
nent  la  premiere  place  dans  leur  art.  On  1'accorde  a 
Goethe,  parmi  les  ecrivains  de  notre  siecle ;  parmi  les 
Hollandais,  a  Rembrandt ;  parmi  les  Venitiens,  a  Titien. 
Trois  artistes  de  la  Renaissance  italienne,  Leonard  de 
Vinci,  Michel-Ange,  et  Raphael,  montent  d'un  consente- 
ment  unanime  au-dessus  de  tous  les  autres."  [L'Evolution 
des  Genres,  I.  (De  la  Critique),  p.  273.] 

18 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

great  critics  of  the  past,  and  upheld  by 
the  arguments  of  the  academic  critics  of  the 
present,  are  founded  on  just  the  same  basis 
as  the  distinctions  and  gradations  established 
and  supported  by  the  jurist  and  the  scientific 
moralist.  The  critic  may  often  deal  with 
matters  of  less  transcendent  importance  than 
his  fellow-students :  but  his  science,  in  the 
last  analysis,  is  as  securely  based  as  theirs ; 
for  all  three  ultimately  rest  on  authority  and 
present  judgment.  He  has  no  such  sanctions 
to  rely  upon  as  the  jurist  and  the  moralist 
have ;  hence  he  is  often  doomed  to  see  un- 
informed opinions  prevail :  *  his  domain  is 
one  that  can  be  easily  entered  from  all  sides ; 
hence  he  is  compelled  to  struggle  with  nu- 
merous rivals  who  are  continually  betraying 
the  cause  of  the  science  he  serves.  But  he 
feels  that  his  position  is  at  bottom  as  secure 
as  that  of  any  student  of  any  semi-science 
can  be ;  and  he  bides  his  time  in  the  hope 
of  better  days. 

1  "But  anybody  is  qualified,  according  to  everybody, 
for  giving  opinions  upon  poetry.  It  is  not  so  in  chymis- 
try  and  mathematics.  Nor  is  it  so,  I  believe,  in  whist  and 
the  polka.  But  then  these  are  more  serious  things." 
[Elizabeth  Barrett  to  Robert  Browning,  Feb.  17,  1845.] 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 


IV 


WE  have  now  seen  what,  in  brief,  are  the 
contentions  of  the  academic  critic ;  and  we 
must  admit  that  if  his  claim,  that  criticism 
rests  for  its  authority  on  the  same  basis  as 
ethics  and  law,  be  established,  it  is  expedient 
for  us,  if  not  incumbent  upon  us,  to  give 
criticism  its  due  influence  in  the  formation  of 
our  literary  and  artistic  tastes  and  judgments. 
Could  we  once  bring  ourselves  to  do  this, 
we  should  find  that  the  parallel  between  criti- 
cism and  its  sister  semi-sciences  holds  very 
closely.  Just  as  there  are  some  ethical  prin- 
ciples acted  upon  by  all  civilized  men,  others 
acted  upon  chiefly  by  certain  races,  others 
only  by  individuals  of  a  high  type  of  char- 
acter, so  there  are  principles  of  criticism 
universal,  racial,  and  individual  in  their  ap- 
plication. For  example,  all  men  have  prac- 
tically agreed  —  at  least  till  the  present 
generation  —  to  regard  poetry  as  superior, 
on  the  whole,  to  prose;  the  French  have 
practically  agreed  that  the  drama  which  pre- 
serves the  unities  is  the  best  for  their  stage; 
most  highly  cultured  individuals  are  agreed 
in  giving  a  greater  value  to  the  sonnet  as  a 
20 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

poetic  form  than  would  be  accorded  it  by 
the  average  reader.  In  the  light  of  these 
facts  we  must  infer  that  there  are  some  prin- 
ciples of  criticism  so  binding  upon  us  that 
we  ought  to  endeavor  not  only  to  make  an 
individual  application  of  them,  but  also  to 
inculcate  them  in  our  children ;  others  which, 
as  Americans,  Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  or 
what  not,  it  will  probably  be  to  our  advan- 
tage to  follow ;  still  others  which,  in  all  like- 
lihood, will  appeal  to  us  more  and  more  as 
we  advance  in  culture.  In  short,  no  man 
who  is  seeking  to  develop  his  literary  and 
artistic  taste  and  judgment  can  afford  to  be  a 
thoroughgoing  impressionist  any  more  than 
he  can  afford  to  be  an  absolute  individualist 
in  his  daily  life  and  conduct. 

If  there  be  any  force  in  the  above  reason- 
ing, it  is  plain  that  something  at  least  of  M. 
Brunetiere's  teaching  may  be  taken  to  heart 
by  us  all.  The  duty  of  fitting  ourselves  not 
merely  to  enjoy  the  great  poetry  of  the 
world,  but  to  prefer  it  to  all  other  forms  of 
aesthetic  enjoyment,  may  be  insisted  upon 
with  advantage.  All  men  will  not  attain  to 
such  enjoyment  or  such  preference ;  but  this 
is  no  reason  why  all  men  should  not  be  ad- 
monished to  make  the  effort  to  attain.  No 
man  follows  perfectly  the  law  of  Christ;  yet 
21 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

no  preacher  ceases  to  uphold  that  law  as  an 
ideal  pattern  of  conduct.  It  is  clear,  then, 
that  no  man  or  child  should  be  allowed  to 
say  complacently,  as  one  so  often  hears  it 
said,  "  I  don't  care  for  poetry."  Perhaps 
they  cannot  be  made  to  care  for  it ;  but  their 
complacency  may  at  least  be  shaken. 

Again,  it  is  just  as  certain  that  there  are 
higher  and  lower  genres  of  poetry  as  that 
poetry  is  superior,  on  the  whole,  to  prose. 
Hence  it  is  our  duty  to  fit  ourselves  to  pre- 
fer the  higher  genres  to  the  lower.  This, 
again,  we  shall  not  all  attain  to.  Some  peo- 
ple are  so  constituted  that  elegiac  musings 
and  speculations,  such  as  those  that  make  up 
the  In  Memoriam,  will  always  attract  them 
more  than  the  stately  march  of  the  Paradise 
Lost,  or  the  subtle  beauty  and  keen  interest 
of  the  Divine  Comedy.  On  the  other  hand, 
one  can  find  persons  who  do  not  care  at  all 
for  such  admirable  elegiac  verse  as  Lamar- 
tine's  Le  Lac.  In  either  case,  we  may  be 
unable  to  correct  the  bias ;  but  we  need  not 
fail  to  point  out  that  it  is  an  unfortunate  one, 
if  any  reliance  may  and  should  be  placed 
upon  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  past  and 
the  trained  judgment  of  the  present. 

But  our  teaching  need  not  stop  here. 
There  will  always  be  persons  who  will  care 

22 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

more  for  the  subject-matter  of  a  book  than 
for  the  style  in  which  it  is  written ;  yet  we 
should  none  the  less  insist  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  every  man  to  fit  himself  to  tell  a  good 
style  from  a  bad,  to  enjoy  an  excellent  style, 
and  to  eschew,  whenever  it  is  possible,  the 
books  that  are  clumsily  written.  An  insist- 
ence upon  this  matter  of  taste  in  style  has, 
after  many  generations,  placed  French  litera- 
ture in  its  present  position  of  supremacy :  a 
failure  to  insist  upon  it  has  left  German  lit- 
erature where  it  is  to-day.  If  we  Americans 
and  Englishmen  will  only  cultivate  our  taste 
for  style,  and  will  remember,  too,  that  prin- 
ciple upon  which  Matthew  Arnold  was  for- 
ever harping,  that  great  literature  needs  a 
sound  subject-matter,  we  shall  all  be  saved 
from  many  bizarre  judgments  and  opinions. 
We  shall  not  then  be  able  to  rank  Whitman, 
true  and  great  poet  though  he  often  was, 
among  the  dii  majores  of  song,  nor  to  imag- 
ine that  Tennyson  or  Wordsworth  or  Shelley 
can  rightly  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath 
with  Milton. 

Yet,  although  we  shall  do  well  to  respect 
the  academic  critic  when  he  bids  us  distrust 
our  own  judgments  and  consult  the  authori- 
tative opinions  of  the  best  critics  past  and 
present,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  must  all 
23 


AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 

endeavor  to  inform  ourselves  about  the  evo- 
lution of  genres,  the  details  of  literary  history, 
or  any  of  the  numerous  matters  that  assume 
great  importance  in  the  eyes  of  the  profes- 
sional critic.  Few  of  us  have  the  time  for 
such  minute  study:  fewer  still  have  any  incli- 
nation for  it.  One  can  love  and  get  plea- 
sure from  flowers  without  knowing  much 
about  botany;  similarly,  one  can  love  and 
get  pleasure  from  literature  without  being  a 
trained  critic.  The  botanist  and  the  critic, 
to  be  sure,  ought,  unless  they  become  dry- 
as-dusts,  to  have  decided  advantages  over 
the  mere  lovers  of  flowers  and  of  books  ; 
but  the  latter  are  in  no  bad  way  if  their 
minds  and  souls  have  been  enlightened  in  a 
broad  and  general  manner.  This  broad  and 
general  enlightenment  will  begin  to  dawn 
upon  us  the  moment  we  are  brought  in  con- 
tact with  great  literature  and  art;  provided 
always  that  our  tendency  to  excessive  indivi- 
dualism is  checked  by  proper  training.  Such 
being  the  case,  we  are  in  duty  bound  to  range 
ourselves  by  the  side  of  those  academic  critics 
who  offer  to  furnish  this  training  which,  as 
we  have  just  seen,  is  by  no  means  technical 
in  character. 


24 


AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 


GRANTING,  however,  that  criticism  has  a  cer- 
tain authority  over  us  with  regard  to  the  sub- 
mission of  our  individual  judgments  relative 
to  such  matters  as  the  supremacy  of  poetry 
to  prose,  of  one  genre  to  another,  of  form  to 
formlessness,  it  would  seem  to  be  true  also 
that,  as  we  are  constituted  with  varying  tastes 
and  aptitudes,  and  brought  up  in  varying 
environments,  we  are  more  or  less  forced  to 
form  subjective  opinions  and  thus  to  become 
impressionist  critics,  at  least  for  the  time  be- 
ing. If  all  criticism  is,  in  its  essence,  subjec- 
tive, and  attains  objectivity  only  through  its 
subsequent  acceptance  by  minds  other  than 
the  critic's  own,  which  in  turn  is  a  subjective 
procedure,  it  is  certain  that  our  own  judg- 
ment or  opinion  with  regard  to  any  object  of 
art  will  be  of  more  vital  importance  to  us  than 
any  conventional  judgment  or  opinion  can 
possibly  be.  In  other  words,  the  impres- 
sionist critic  would  seem  to  have  a  rdle  as 
important  and  a  province  as  extended  as  the 
academic  critic  has. 

There  can  scarcely  be  two  opinions  with 
regard   to  this  matter.     The  fact  that  there 


AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 

are  impressionist  critics  who  are  widely  read 
and  enjoyed  seems  of  itself  to  prove  their 
usefulness.  It  is  not  possible  to  deny  that, 
by  concentrating  themselves  upon  some  fav- 
orite author,  artist,  book,  or  painting,  impres- 
sionist critics  have  added  to  the  world's 
knowledge,  and,  what  is  more,  to  its  enjoy- 
ment ;  that  they  have  actually  forged  weapons 
for  their  foes,  the  academic  critics,  to  use 
against  them.  Who,  for  example,  has  done 
more  to  make  contemporary  France  return  to 
a  proper  admiration  of  Lamartine  than  that 
prince  of  impressionists,  M.  Lemaitre?  Cer- 
tainly not  M.  Brunetiere.  But  impressionists 
are  justified  in  existing  not  only  by  the  good 
they  do,  but  also  by  the  fact  that  there  is  an 
abundant  range  of  work  for  them  to  accom- 
plish. There  are  regions  in  the  domain  of 
literature  and  art  over  which  the  academic 
critic  has  little  or  no  control.  No  one  should 
affirm,  for  example,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
academic  critic  to  set  us  rules  for  the  enjoy- 
ment or  even  full  comprehension  of  that 
department  of  poetry  known  as  "  society 
verse."  He  can  tell  us,  indeed,  that  it  should 
not  be  ranked  high  in  the  scale  of  the  genres ; 
but,  if  he  be  wise,  he  will  scarcely  undertake 
to  tell  us  how  much  we  ought  to  care  for  it, 
or  when  it  will  most  appeal  to  us. 
26 


AUTHORITY   OF  CRITICISM 

The  reason  for  this  proper  reticence  on  his 
part  is  very  simple.  Society  verse  does  not 
necessarily  appeal  to  the  natural  man ;  and  the 
academic  critic,  in  most  of  his  reasoning,  finds 
it  necessary  to  give  his  principles  of  criticism 
the  broadest  basis  possible.  He  tells  us  that 
it  is  human  to  admire  the  sublime  and  to  weep 
at  the  pathetic ;  but  he  cannot  tell  us  with 
any  truth  that  it  is  human  to  smile  at  the 
cleverness  of  a  smart  social  set  The  aca- 
demic critic  feels  at  home,  therefore,  in  prais- 
ing the  Paradise  Lost  and  the  Antigone :  he 
will  do  well  to  leave  to  the  impressionist  — 
to  the  man  to  the  manner  born,  like  the  late 
Mr.  Locker-Lampson  (who  indeed  could 
theorize  also  on  the  subject  in  an  admirable 
way)  —  the  task  of  initiating  us  into  the 
charming  mysteries  of  society  verse.  The 
moment,  however,  that  the  impressionist  goes 
too  far  in  his  advocacy  of  his  favorite  poet  or 
kind  of  poetry,  the  academic  critic,  with  his 
broader  knowledge  and  wider  range  of 
thought,  is  ready  to  check  him.  Pope,  for 
instance,  is,  in  many  respects,  a  poet  of  society 
whom  it  would  be  easy  for  a  certain  kind  of 
impressionist  to  overrate,  and  for  another 
kind,  preferring,  let  us  say,  the  poetry  of 
nature,  to  underrate,  even  to  the  point  of  pro- 
claiming that  the  brilliant  satirist  was  no  poet 
27 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

at  all.  Both  these  extremes  of  judgment 
would  surely  be  corrected  by  a  competent 
academic  critic. 

But  not  only  can  the  impressionist  critic 
serve  us  as  the  best  possible  guide  in  certain 
well-defined  regions  of  literature  and  art;  he 
is  also  the  person  to  help  us  in  the  explora- 
tion of  new  regions.  There  are  genres  like 
the  novel,  the  possibilities  of  which  we  are 
probably  far  from  knowing  thoroughly.  With 
respect  to  present  work  in  these  genres,  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  the  training  and 
methods  of  the  academic  critic  fit  him  for 
doing  effective  service :  he  is  at  his  best  in 
dealing  with  genres  of  which  the  capabilities 
have  been  long  tested.  The  impressionist, 
on  the  other  hand,  unfettered  by  rules  and 
traditions,  is  likely  to  be  sympathetic  with 
the  fresh  tentatives  which  creative  genius  is 
continually  making  in  what  we  may  call  the 
"  unclosed  genres."  He  is  the  best  critic  for 
the  new  writers  and,  hence,  for  the  majority 
of  contemporary  readers,  who  naturally  form 
the  clientage  of  the  men  who  are  making 
current  literature.  Then,  again,  it  is  the  im- 
pressionist critic  who  is  best  qualified  to 
apply  to  the  literature  of  the  past  those  fresh 
and  novel  points  of  view  which  each  advanc- 
ing generation  supplies,  —  a  most  important 
28 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

work  when  it  is  not  undertaken  in  a  captious 
and  self-seeking  spirit. 

Now  surely,  if  all  that  has  been  said  be 
true,  the  role  of  the  impressionist  is  by  no 
means  a  contemptible  one.  Not  only  has  he 
certain  departments  of  art  and  literature  prac- 
tically under  his  control,  but  he  can  do  his 
share  in  criticising  the  men  and  works  of  the 
past,  and  he  has  the  lion's  share  of  the  critical 
labors  of  the  present.  He  has  no  reason  to 
call  the  academic  critic  by  harsh  names ;  yet 
he  frequently  does  —  se-emingly  because, 
being  bound  by  few  rules,  he  forgets  that  he 
is  bound  by  any,  even  by  those  of  courtesy. 
He  generally  takes  up  a  favorite  and  becomes 
a  partisan,  after  which  he  fancies  that,  in 
order  to  elevate  his  hero,  he  must  labor  not 
merely  to  subordinate,  but  to  cast  down  other 
great  men.  He  will  praise  Tintoretto  while  be- 
littling Titian  ;  he  will  laud  Shelley  while  decry- 
ing Byron ;  and  he  pities  the  benighted  soul 
that  in  the  bonds  and  fetters  of  custom  still 
grovels  before  the  "  crumbling  idol."  This  is 
but  to  say  that,  although  the  role  of  the  impres- 
sionist is  a  great  one,  he  is  often  false  to  it. 
Narrow  and  bigoted  critics  of  an  academic  kind 
there  have  been  in  abundance ;  and  they  have 
done  much  harm,  but  scarcely  enough  to  equal 
that  done  by  the  wild  impressionists  who  are 
29 


AUTHORITY  OF   CRITICISM 

forever  running   amuck  through  the  storied 
realms  of  art  and  literature. 


VI 

WE  are  not  so  much  concerned,  however, 
with  the  failings  of  our  two  varieties  of  critics 
as  we  are  with  the  very  practical  question, 
how  we  may  get  safely  steered  through  the 
wide  sea  of  literature  when  so  many  helms- 
men are  offering  their  services;  and  this 
question  we  may  perhaps  answer  in  part 
by  summing  up  the  points  we  have  been 
making. 

We  have  seen  already  that,  in  certain 
matters,  we  shall  do  well  to  rely  on  the 
academic  critics.  We  have  seen  that  there 
are  some  universal  principles  of  criticism 
that  we  should  all  learn  to  apply  so  far  as 
we  are  able,  such  as  the  superiority  of 
poetry  to  prose,  of  one  genre  to  another, 
of  form  to  formlessness.  A  moment's  con- 
sideration will  show  us,  furthermore,  that 
corollaries  from  these  principles  are  easily 
to  be  drawn  and  equally  to  be  observed. 
Thus,  for  example,  every  schoolboy,  not 
merely  Macaulay's,  should  know  that  Virgil, 
Dante,  and  Milton,  as  great  epic  poets,  are 
superior  respectively  to  Horace,  Petrarch, 
30 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

and  Shelley,  as  great  lyric  poets,  and  should 
be  ranked  accordingly,  and  that  if  he  does 
not  like  the  greater  poet  so  much  as  he 
does  the  inferior,  it  is  either  his  own  fault 
or  his  own  misfortune,  which,  unless  special 
reasons  to  the  contrary  exist,  he  should  seek 
to  remedy  as  best  he  may. 

Within  the  same  category  of  poetry,  how- 
ever, no  such  definite  assignment  of  rank  is, 
as  a  rule,  possible,  save  when,  as  in  the  cases 
of  Homer  and  Shakspere,  a  universal  con- 
sensus of  opinion  obtains  the  force  of  law. 
It  is  idle,  for  instance,  to  assert  dogmatically 
that  Dante  is  a  greater  poet  than  Milton,  or 
vice  versa.  Yet  nowhere  in  criticism  is  there 
more  tendency  to  dogmatic  utterance  than 
in  this  very  delicate  matter  of  balancing  the 
respective  claims  of  two  poets  of  the  same 
type,  whose  rank  is  nearly  even;  and  we 
cannot  too  often  remind  ourselves  that 
dogma,  although  necessary  perhaps  at  times, 
is  never  attractive  or  satisfactory  to  the  in- 
quiring and  aspiring  mind.  It  is  open  to 
us  to  urge  everything  we  can  in  support  of 
our  favorite's  claims,  —  the  wider  acceptance 
of  Dante  and  his  greater  hold  upon  human 
sympathies,  or  Milton's  treatment  of  the 
sublime,  and  his  marvellous  metrical  mas- 
tery,—  but,  when  all  is  said,  when  we  have 


AUTHORITY   OF   CRITICISM 

ranged  the  critics  and  summed  up  the  argu- 
ments pro  and  con.,  we  must  frankly  admit 
that  there  is  still  room  for  differences  of 
opinion  in  this  case  and  in  all  similar  cases. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  too  firmly 
crush  out  such  foolish  recalcitrancy  against 
established  opinion  as  was  once  exhibited 
by  a  college  student  who,  when  asked 
whether  he  thought  Bacon  could  have 
written  Shakspere's  plays,  replied  indig- 
nantly, being  more  in  love  with  philoso- 
phy than  with  poetry :  —  "  Not  much  !  He 
would  n't  have  wasted  his  time  on  such 
wretched  stuff!  "  That  young  man  was  not 
joking,  on  the  principle  that  a  foolish  ques- 
tion required  a  foolish  answer:  he  was 
merely  furnishing  an  unconscious  example 
of  the  folly  of  untrained  impressionist 
criticism. 

Other  principles  of  universal,  national,  and 
class  or  individual  application  might  be 
named  that  are  equally  binding  upon  us 
and  that  measure  the  extent  of  our  reliance 
upon  the  academic  critic.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  have  already  seen  that  we  should 
rely  on  the  impressionist  for  criticism  rela- 
tive to  "  unclosed  genres  "  like  the  novel  and 
"  non-universal  genres "  like  society  verse, 
to  contemporary  writers  and  artists,  and  to 
32 


AUTHORITY  OF  CRITICISM 

the  work  of  the  past  in  all  the  genres  when 
it  is  necessary  to  reexamine  it  from  fresh 
and  legitimate  points  of  view.  If  we  will 
only  bear  these  principles  in  mind,  we  shall 
scarcely  go  greatly  astray  in  choosing  our 
critics,  or  in  determining  how  far  to  follow 
them. 

But  if  the  critics,  on  their  part,  continue 
to  assert,  as  so  many  of  them  do,  that  the 
average  reader  has  no  rights  and  that  art 
and  literature  can  be  truly  appreciated  only 
by  the  elect,  the  mandarins,  the  public  will 
most  assuredly  continue  to  commit  its  own 
peculiar  absurdities,  to  consider  Tom  Jones 
an  immoral  book  and  Ben  Hur  a  great  one ; 
to  read  a  thousand  copies  of  Trilby  to  ten 
of  the  Peau  de  Chagrin ;  and  to  rejoice  in 
the  flat  namby-pambyism  of  a  "  native  author 
named  Blank  "  or  of  a  foreign  author  named 
Double  Blank.  And  who  shall  blame  them 
for  their  eccentricities,  when  the  authority 
of  criticism  is  so  slightly  esteemed  by  nine- 
tenths  of  the  writers  who  call  themselves 
critics? 


33 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 


35 


II 

APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

I.   INTRODUCTION 

It  hardly  seems  extravagant  to  say  that 
there  is  not,  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature,  a  more  entrancing,  a  more  per- 
plexing, a  more  irritating  subject  for  study 
and  reflection  than  the  life,  character,  and 
works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  If  any  one 
doubt  the  truth  of  this  statement,  let  him 
spend  a  few  weeks  among  Shelley's  biograph- 
ers and  critics.  If  he  do  not  read  some  of 
the  most  cobwebby  special  pleading  ever 
spun,  if  he  do  not  encounter  some  of  the 
strangest  canons  of  criticism  ever  promulgated 
this  side  of  the  "  visiting  moon- " ;  if  he  do 
not  find  himself  now  hot  with  indignation, 
now  cold  with  shame,  now  ready  to  burst 
with  laughter,  now  ready  to  weep  with  sym- 
pathy, at  one  moment  in  a  heavenly  glow  for 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  at 
another  longing  to  assist  in  sending  to  the 
stake  every  idealist  that  ever  hinted  the  essen- 
tial commonplaceness  of  our  everyday  life; 
37 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

if  he  do  not,  in  short,  end  by  debating  with 
himself  whether  he  is  a  confirmed  dyspeptic 
or  an  adjudged  lunatic,  then  he  is  a  most 
cool-headed  and  thoroughly  enviable  person. 

But  as  no  one  who  credits  the  above  truth- 
ful record  of  my  own  experiences  will  be 
likely  to  enter  the  enchanted  forest  of  Shel- 
leyan  criticism,  and  as  many  who  have  already 
ventured  within  its  depths  may  be  inclined 
to  tell  a  different  tale,  I  feel  called  upon  to 
preface  this  paper  with  a  few  confirmatory 
excerpts  culled  from  my  own  reading  of  the 
critics,  or,  to  continue  the  metaphor,  I  will 
exhibit  a  few  of  the  thorns  of  that  enchanted 
forest  that  were  found  clinging  to  my  gar- 
ments when  I  succeeded  in  effecting  my 
escape. 

Mr.  Carlyle,  who  would  certainly  not  have 
owned  up  to  lunacy,  although  he  might  have 
confessed  with  some  propriety  to  being  a 
dyspeptic,  brought  away  from  what  was  prob- 
ably a  cursory  reading  of  Shelley  and  his 
critics,  the  characteristically  formed  opinion 
that  the  poet  was  a  "  windy  phenomenon." 
Mr.  Browning,  after  a  profound  study  of  Shel- 
ley, wrote  of  him  as  follows  in  Pauline : 

"  And  my  choice  fell 
Not  so  much  on  a  system  as  a  man  — 
On  one,  whom  praise  of  mine  would  not  offend, 

3§ 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

Who  was  as  calm  as  beauty,  being  such 

Unto  mankind  as  thou  to  me,  Pauline  — 

Believing  in  them  and  devoting  all 

His  soul's  strength  to  their  winning  back  to  peace  ; 

Who  sent  forth  hopes  and  longings  for  their  sake 

Clothed  in  all  passion's  melodies,  which  first 

Caught  me  and  set  me,  as  to  a  sweet  task, 

To  gather  every  breathing  of  his  songs  : 

And  woven  with  them  there  were  words  which  seemed 

A  key  to  a  new  world,  the  muttering 

Of  angels  of  something  unguessed  by  man." 

Years  later,  in  a  more  mature  and  nobler 
poem,  perhaps  the  profoundest  poem  of  the 
century,  Sordello,  he  wrote  these  glowing 
lines : 

"  Stay  —  thou,  spirit,  come  not  near 
Now  —  not  this  time  desert  thy  cloudy  place 
To  scare  me,  thus  employed,  with  that  pure  face  ! 
I  need  not  fear  this  audience,  I  make  free 
With  them,  but  then  this  is  no  place  for  thee  ! 
The  thunder-phrase  of  the  Athenian,  grown 
Up  out  of  memories  of  Marathon, 
Would  echo  like  his  own  sword's  griding  screech 
Braying  a  Persian  shield,  —  the  silver  speech 
Of  Sidney's  self,  the  starry  paladin, 
Turn  intense  as  a  trumpet  sounding  in 
The  knights  to  tilt,  wert  thou  to  hear !  " 


Certainly  there   is   a   difference   as  wide   as 

the  poles  between  the  judgments  of  the  great 

lay-preacher  and  of  the  great  poet.     Which 

39 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

is  right,  or  are  they  both  expressing  half- 
truths  only? 

Carlyle  and  Browning  are  not,  however, 
professional  critics,  and  it  is  with  the  latter 
that  we  are  especially  concerned.  Mr.  W. 
M.  Rossetti  who  was  asked  to  write  the 
sketch  of  Shelley  which  appeared  in  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  may 
fairly  be  called  one,  and  I  subjoin  a  sentence 
from  his  very  able  article : 

"  In  his  own  day  an  alien  in  the  world  of 
mind  and  invention,  and  in  our  day  scarcely 
yet  a  denizen  of  it,  he  [Shelley]  appears 
destined  to  become,  in  the  long  vista  of  years, 
an  informing  presence  in  the  innermost  shrine 
of  human  thought." 

Not  long  after  Mr.  Rossetti  wrote  the 
above  delightfully  poised  sentence  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  concluded  what  was  destined  to 
be  with  one  exception  his  last  critical  utter- 
ance with  the  following  words : 

"  But  let  no  one  suppose  that  a  want  of 
humor  and  a  self  delusion  such  as  Shelley's 
have  no  effect  upon  a  man's  poetry.  The 
man  Shelley,  in  very  truth,  is  not  entirely 
sane,  and  Shelley's  poetry  is  not  entirely  sane 
either.  The  Shelley  of  actual  life  is  a  vision 
of  beauty  and  radiance,  indeed,  but  availing 
nothing,  effecting  nothing.  And  in  poetry, 
40 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

no  less  than  in  life,  he  is  'a  beautiful  and 
ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the  void  his 
luminous  wings  in  vain."  " 

Here  is  a  sentence  for  us  as  neatly  turned 
as  Mr.  Rossetti's,  as  positive  in  its  expression 
of  individual  opinion,  and  proceeding  from  a 
far  greater  hand.  But  we  must  contrast  this 
again  with  Mr.  Swinburne's  vehement  dictum 
that  Shelley  is  "  the  master  singer  of  our 
modern  poets,"  and  must  then  remember 
that  neither  Wordsworth  nor  Keats,  both  of 
whom  had  great  tact  and  discernment  in  all 
matters  relating  to  their  art,  could  appreciate 
Shelley's  poetry. 

Nor  is  the  case  different  with  regard  to 
Shelley's  life,  or  with  regard  to  his  character 
and  acquirements.  As  good  and  clear- 
headed a  man  as  Charles  Kingsley  thought 
him  a  far  less  lovable  character  than  Byron, 
while  Byron,  cynic  as  he  was,  declared  that 
Shelley  was  the  most  gentle,  the  most 
amiable,  and  least  worldly-minded  person 
he  ever  met.  As  it  was  in  his  life-time,  so  it 
is  now  and  probably  ever  will  be  —  a  most 
difficult  matter  to  determine  from  the  verdicts 
of  his  critics  alone  whether  he  was  a  spawn 
of  Satan  or  a  seraph  of  light.  I  have  the 
impression  that  I  have  somewhere  seen  him 
styled  an  archangel,  and  I  am  certain  that 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

not  many  years  ago  a  distinguished  South- 
ern divine  consigned  him,  in  the  course  of  a 
sermon,  to  the  horrors  of  everlasting  flames, 
in  company  with  another  picturesque  subject 
for  damnation,  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

In  view  of  all  these  diverging  opinions  we 
are  hardly  surprised  to  discover  that  critics 
are  not  quite  agreed  as  to  the  position  to  be 
accorded  Shelley  as  a  philosopher.  We  find 
one  of  his  biographers  describing  him  as  "  one 
who  lived  in  rarest  ether  on  the  topmost 
heights  of  human  thought  "  ;  but  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen,  who  is  an  authority  in  such  matters, 
would  hardly  seem  to  recommend  the  rarity 
of  this  ether  when  he  writes :  "  In  truth, 
Shelley's  creed  means  only  a  vague  longing, 
and  must  be  passed  through  some  more  phil- 
osophical brain  before  it  can  become  a  fit 
topic  for  discussion."  A  vague  longing,  one 
opines,  can  be  had  by  a  dweller  in  the  hum- 
blest valleys  of  thought. 

But  the  biographers  who  track  Shelley  to 
these  heights  of  rarefied  atmosphere  seem 
to  succumb  to  the  attenuating  influences  of 
their  environment  and  to  take  very  rarefied 
views  of  actions  which  in  our  grosser  atmo- 
sphere we  are  wont  to  call  by  very  gross 
names.  Here  are  some  samples. 

It  seems  to  be  pretty  well  agreed,  even  by 
42 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

Shelley's  warmest  admirers,  that  the  poet's 
utterances  about  himself  and  his  surround- 
ings cannot  always  be  accepted  with  implicit 
faith  —  in  short  that  Shelley  not  infrequently, 
whether  consciously  or  unconsciously,  did  not 
tell  the  truth.  But  mark  how  Professor  Dow- 
den,  with  the  approbation  of  another  biog- 
rapher, Mr.  Sharp,  deals  with  this  little  failing. 
Says  the  Dublin  professor :  He  "  was  one  of 
those  men  for  whom  the  hard  outline  of  facts 
in  their  own  individual  history  has  little 
fixity;  whose  footsteps  are  forever  followed 
and  overflowed  by  the  wave  of  oblivion,  who 
remember  with  extraordinary  tenacity  the 
sentiment  of  times  and  of  places,  but  lose 
the  framework  of  circumstance  in  which  the 
sentiment  was  set ;  and  who,  in  reconstructing 
an  image  of  the  past,  often  unconsciously 
supply  links  and  lines  upon  the  suggestion 
of  that  sentiment  of  emotion  which  is  for 
them  the  essential  reality." 

Now,  although  I  believe  that  in  Shelley's 
case  Professor  Dowden  has  not  strayed  far 
enough  to  lose  all  sight  of  the  truth,  I  submit 
that  the  above  sentence  rarefies  facts  in  a 
way  that  should  commend  itself  to  the  heart 
of  every  lawyer  with  a  guilty  client  to  defend. 
Such  a  lawyer  should  also  take  to  heart  the 
judgment  of  Mr.  Sharp  with  regard  to  his 
43 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

hero's  conduct  to  the  unfortunate  Harriet, 
"  that  Shelley,  intoxicated  with  vision  of  the 
ideal  life,  behaved  unwisely,  and  even  wrong- 
fully, in  his  conduct  of  certain  realities." 

Is  it  any  wonder,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
ask,  that  an  ordinary  mortal  like  myself  should 
be  glad  to  escape  from  the  jungle  of  Shelleyan 
criticism,  or  that  I  should  feel  impelled  to 
stop  every  one  I  meet,  like  an  Ancient 
Mariner  but  with  a  less  potent  eye,  to  point 
my  moral  and  adorn  my  tale?  In  pursuance 
of  this  task,  whether  it  be  imposed  upon  me 
by  vanity  or  fate,  it  will  be  necessary  for  me 
to  pass  in  review  biographical  facts  that  have 
been  discussed  thousands  of  times,  and  poems 
that  every  one  knows  by  heart  or  by  critical 
report.  Yet  this  is  the  lot  of  all  who  venture 
to  write  about  famous  authors,  and  I  should 
not  regret  it  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  I 
labor  under  the  unpleasant  consciousness  of 
knowing  that  sooner  or  later,  I  must  bring  up 
in  a  camp  defended  by  only  one  stout  soldier, 
that  I  must  fight  on  under  an  unpopular  flag, 
that  I  must  cut  myself  off  from  leaders  to 
whom  I  have  always  looked  up  with  rever- 
ence and  admiration.1  Nevertheless  I  "  can- 
not choose  "  but  speak  even  though  I  may  not 

1  Especially  from  my  friend  Dr.  Richard  Garnett,  whose 
devotion  to  Shelley  is  so  well  known. 

44 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

be  able  to  compel  a  single  wedding-guest 
to  hear  me  out  while  I  say  my  say  about 
Shelley,  the  man  and  the  poet. 


II.   LIFE  AND   CHARACTER. 

As  the  experiences  of  life  must  furnish  the 
materials  upon  which  both  the  imagination 
and  the  fancy  work,  it  is  always  interesting  and 
important  to  know  at  least  the  main  facts  of  a 
poet's  life.  This  is  especially  true  in  the  case 
of  Shelley,  whose  life  and  whose  poetry  are, 
to  use  a  word  of  which  he  was  inordinately 
fond,  inextricably  "  interpenetrated."  The 
main  facts  of  this  life  are  fortunately  beyond 
dispute,  but  the  judgments  to  be  passed  upon 
these  facts  are  unfortunately  very  far  from 
settled.  I  say  the  main  facts,  for  it  is  surely 
of  little  importance  for  us  to  know  whether 
Shelley  was  really  attacked  and  fired  upon 
by  a  burglar  at  Tannyrallt,  or  whether  he 
was  simply  suffering  from  a  fit  of  hallucina- 
tion consequent  upon  a  too  copious  draught 
from  his  laudanum  bottle,  the  facts  of  his 
susceptibility  to  hallucinations  and  of  his  use 
of  laudanum  being  sufficiently  attested  in 
numerous  other  instances.  We  have  an 
abundance  of  consentaneous  testimony  as  to 
45 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

the  poet's  personal  idiosyncrasies,  and  about 
such  facts  as  his  desertion  of  his  first  wife 
there  is  unfortunately  no  doubt  whatsoever. 
But  as  these  facts  are  familiar  to  most  per- 
sons who  are  at  all  interested  in  literature,  it 
will  be  sufficient  here  to  indicate  briefly  what 
seem  to  me  to  be  the  chief  conclusions  one 
ought  to  draw  concerning  Shelley's  life  and 
character. 

The  first  point  that  strikes  one  is,  I  think, 
the  utter  absence  of  all  that  is  spiritual  and 
elevating  and  refined  from  Shelley's  early 
environment.  Upon  this  point,  Mr.  Arnold 
lays  great  stress  in  the  essay  that  has  already 
been  quoted  from,  and  it  is  a  most  important 
point.  There  probably  never  was  a  child 
who  would  have  responded  so  readily  as 
Shelley  to  ennobling  and  purifying  influences, 
there  never  was  a  child  who  so  entirely  missed 
them.  There  is  hardly  a  trace  of  any  mater- 
nal influence  ;  and  his  sisters  were  too  young 
and  too  much  accustomed  to  worship  their 
eccentric  but  most  kind  and  lovable  brother, 
to  make  any  serious  or  sobering  impression 
upon  him.  His  father  was  a  typical  English 
squire  of  the  period,  who  has  been  rather 
harshly  treated  by  his  son's  biographers.  If 
he  was  dull,  conservative  and  somewhat 
servile  to  the  powers  that  be,  he  was  only 
46 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

what  his  environment  made  him,  and  was  no 
better  or  worse  than  thousands  of  his  contem- 
poraries were  then,  or  than  some  English 
squires  doubtless  are  to-day.  Nor  are  such 
characters  at  all  confined  to  England,  for  one 
may  meet  many  a  Mr.  Timothy  Shelley  in 
this  progressive  and  enlightened  country  of 
ours.  But  it  was  a  deplorable  fact  for 
Shelley  that  he  had  such  a  father,  and  cer- 
tainly Mr.  Timothy  Shelley  thought  that  it 
was  a  deplorable  fact  for  him  that  he  had 
such  a  son. 

Now  a  sensitive,  high-strung  boy,  who 
could  not  find  good  influences  at  home,  was 
hardly  likely  to  find  them  at  Eton  or  at 
Oxford  during  the  early  part  of  this  century. 
Public  schools  and  universities  exercise  an  ad- 
mirable influence  upon  normal  or  only  slightly 
abnormal  youths,  but  they  never  did  and 
never  will  suit  natures  such  as  Shelley's  was ; 
and  sensible  parents  should  have  recognized 
the  fact.  Shelley  picked  up  much  curious 
information,  of  course,  during  his  school  life, 
which  served  him  in  after  years,  but  he  did 
not  learn  what  is  the  best  thing  that  schools 
and  colleges  teach,  to  use  his  common  sense. 
It  is  a  very  great  mistake  to  think,  as  so  many 
do,  that  our  school  days  are  set  apart  to 
enable  us  to  use  what  may  be  called  our 
47 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

uncommon  sense;  the  main  duty  that  lies 
before  every  child  in  his  school  days  is  to 
learn  to  use  his  common  reason  on  common 
things,  and  it  is  the  main  duty  of  his  teacher 
to  see  that  he  does  it.  But  none  of  Shelley's 
teachers  seems  to  have  seen  or  done  his  duty 
in  this  regard  toward  him,  and  they  have  in 
consequence  suffered  at  the  hands  of  his 
biographers.  Only  one  has  practically  es- 
caped censure,  the  venerable  and  kindly  Dr. 
Lind  v/hom  Shelley  idolized  and  whom  he  has 
immortalized  as  Zonanas  in  Prince  Athanase, 
and  the  hermit  in  Laon  and  Cythna.  Now,  while 
not  meaning  to  disparage  Dr.  Lind's  kindness, 
I  must  record  my  conviction  that  he  is  one  of 
the  most  unwholesome  influences  connected 
with  Shelley's  early  life.  I  long  believed  that 
I  was  the  only  person  in  the  world  that  held 
this  opinion,  until  I  found  that  Mr.  John 
Cordy  Jeaffreson  maintains  it  with  great  vigor 
in  his  able  but  unfair  biography  of  the  poet, 
the  question-begging  title  of  which  (The 
Real  Shelley)  ought  to  warn  off  the  unini- 
tiated. My  charge  against  Dr.  Lind  is  simply 
this, —  that,  having  gained  a  strong  influence 
over  his  impressionable  pupil,  he  failed,  so 
far  as  the  records  show,  to  use  that  influence 
to  any  good  purpose.  We  know,  indeed, 
that  he  encouraged  Shelley  in  that  fondness 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

for  thin  and  cloudy  metaphysical  discussion 
which  was  afterwards  to  lead  to  his  expulsion 
from  Oxford,  to  his  sins  as  a  mystifying 
rhetorician  when  he  should  have  been  writing 
divine  poetry,  and  finally  to  his  being  labelled 
by  practical,  or  rather  would-be  practical 
men  like  Carlyle,  "  a  windy  phenomenon." 
We  know  also,  that  he  encouraged  Shelley 
to  dabble  in  science,  which  was  about  as  bad 
as  encouraging  him  to  dabble  in  metaphysics. 
If  he  had  taught  Shelley  to  love  science  with 
the  wholesome  thoroughness  of  a  sound 
mind  impressed  with  her  wonders,  he  would 
have  conferred  an  inestimable  boon  upon  him. 
As  it  was,  he  gave  him  a  fatal  bias  toward 
dabbling  that  affected  his  whole  after  career, 
and  furnished  Matthew  Arnold  an  excuse  for 
labelling  him  with  that  terrible  adjective 
ineffectual.  Dr.  Lind  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  the  only  man  who  had  a  chance  to  set 
Shelley's  feet  upon  the  paths  of  common- 
sense,  and  I  believe  that  had  he  tried  he 
could  have  become  a  saving  and  corrective 
influence  to  one  of  the  noblest  but  most 
erratic  spirits  that  ever  "  lighted  upon  this  orb 
which  "  he  "  hardly  seemed  to  touch."  How 
much  English  poetry,  and  so  the  whole  world, 
would  have  profited  by  this  influence,  cannot 
be  estimated.  But  Dr.  Lind's  talent  has  long 
4  49 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

since  been  removed  from  its  covering  napkin, 
and  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  I  have  not 
done  him  grave  injustice  by  coupling  his 
name  with  the  undesirable  notoriety  that 
attaches  to  the  slothful  servant  of  the  parable. 

I  must  pass  over  Shelley's  Oxford  career 
in  spite  of  the  fascination  which  Hogg's 
description  thereof  must  always  lend  to  it. 
As  at  Eton,  he  found  no  one  to  guide  him, 
no  one  to  sympathize  with  him  save  Hogg, 
who,  though  commonsense  and  practical 
enough  in  some  respects,  and  though  de- 
voted to  Shelley,  was  hardly  the  proper  per- 
son to  correct  his  extravagances.  Certainly 
the  dons  who  drew  up  their  sentence  of  ex- 
pulsion before  they  had  given  the  youthful 
atheist  a  chance  to  exculpate  himself,  simply 
fitted  in  with  the  rest  of  his  soul-cramping 
environment.  They  were  doubtless  honest 
enough,  however,  in  their  belief  that  Shelley 
was  fast  speeding  to  the  devil  and  endeavor- 
ing to  drag  his  sleepy  University  with  him, 
and  the  young  visionary  was  probably  more 
contumacious  than  his  friend  Hogg  has  seen 
fit  to  record. 

One  could  wish  one  might  pass  over  with 
equal  rapidity  the  few  years  that  connected 
Shelley  with  the  unfortunate  Harriet  West- 
brook,  but  it  cannot  be  done.  In  those 
5Q 


APROJPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

years  was  to  be  gathered  the  first  bitter 
fruit  of  his  reckless  and  ill-trained  youth ; 
and  in  those  years  the  Muse  of  English 
Poetry  had  to  bewail  the  marring  and  almost 
total  undoing  of  what  promised  to  be  the 
purest,  the  most  beautiful  spirit  that  had 
ever  been  born  to  do  her  service.  But  if 
one  cannot  pass  over  these  years,  one  may 
at  least  presuppose  that  every  one  is  familiar 
with  the  harrowing  facts  on  which  one  has 
to  base  one's  judgments  and  one  can  give 
those  judgments  briefly. 

Shelley,  as  we  all  know,  had  by  this  time 
broken  completely  with  the  past.  He  had 
dabbled  in  science  natural  and  occult,  had 
carried  his  metaphysical  speculations  to  the 
verge  of  absurdity,  and  had  announced  that 
he  loathed  history.  He  had  overleaped  all 
prejudices  of  caste  and  become  a  radical  in 
political  and  social  matters.  Being  the  most 
sincere  and  courageous  of  mortals,  having  in 
him  the  stuff  of  which  the  martyr  and  the 
hero  are  made,  loving  his  fellow-man  with 
all  the  intensity  of  his  nature,  ever  aspiring 
toward  what  he  believed  to  be  the  true,  the 
beautiful  and  the  good,  he  was  not  likely  to 
share  the  fate  of  most  young  enthusiasts  of 
twenty,  to  sow  his  wild  oats  and  settle  down 
into  a  well-to-do,  conservative  man  of  family, 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

a  smug  and  contented  laudato?  temporis  acti. 
What  Shelley  believed,  that  he  would  do,  and 
hence  the  pitiable  necessity  under  which  his 
friends  and  relatives  labored  of  teaching  him 
what  to  believe.  But  what  had  Mr.  Timothy 
Shelley,  what  had  the  Oxford  dons,  what  had 
Mr.  Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg,  finally  what  had 
dabbling  Dr.  Lind  to  teach  this  genius  of  a 
youth  who  could  pierce  their  commonplace 
theories  of  religion  and  polities  and  social 
life  as  easily  as  an  eagle  can  pierce  the  web 
of  gossamer  which  an  adventurous  spider  has 
woven  over  its  nest?  And  what  had  the 
times  to  teach  him?  for  when  a  youth  cannot 
be  taught  by  his  intimates,  he  sometimes 
finds  in  the  writings  of  great  contemporaries 
or  in  the  march  of  the  world's  progress  les- 
sons of  the  highest  import  to  his  inquiring 
soul. 

The  times  taught  him  precisely  what  his 
own  spirit  felt  naturally  toward  its  environ- 
ment —  revolt,  self-sufficiency  in  its  best  sense, 
aspiration.  The  forces  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion had  by  no  means  spent  their  strength. 
In  spite  of  Napoleon,  men  were  everywhere 
dreaming  of  liberty  and  of  the  glories  that 
awaited  the  enfranchised  spirit  of  man.  The 
world  was  severed  from  its  hateful  past  and 
history  was  now  of  less  value  than  the  vision- 
52 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

ary  dreams  of  any  self-appointed  prophet. 
Kings  were  ^but  creatures  set  by  Providence 
upon  thrones  for  the  sons  of  liberty  to  take 
a  savage  pleasure  in  overthrowing  them. 
The  giant  custom  was  to  be  slain  by  a 
pebble  from  the  sling  of  some  philosophic 
David ;  religion,  law,  morality  were  to  be 
annihilated  or  metamorphosed,  and  a  new 
heaven  was  to  look  down  upon  a  new  earth. 
Such  was  the  Zeitgeist  whose  wings  fanned 
the  forehead  of  Shelley  and  it  was  against 
the  breathings  of  this  spirit  that  the  wingless 
words  of  Mr.  Timothy  Shelley  and  his  like 
had  to  contend. 

But  if  sober  wisdom  was  not  to  flow  in 
upon  Shelley  from  his  contemplation  of  the 
world's  mad  vortex,  he  was  in  still  less  likeli- 
hood of  obtaining  it  from  the  lips  or  from 
the  pens  of  his  contemporaries.  Although 
he  was  not  unfamiliar  with  the  great  writers 
of  the  past  these  could  not  have  influenced 
him  very  profoundly,  simply  because  they 
belonged  to  that  past  which  the  present 
seemed  determined  to  break  with.  We  of 
this  generation  can  see  that  if  he  could  have 
been  brought  under  the  spell  of  Burke,  there 
might  have  been  some  salvation  for  him; 
but  Burke  was  at  a  discount  among  fiery 
enthusiasts  in  1812.  Instead  of  Burke  Mr. 
53 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

Timothy  Shelley  recommended  Paley,  at  the 
mention  of  whom  our  young  poet  fairly 
foamed  at  the  mouth  when  he  ought  merely 
to  have  smiled.  Paley  versus  Shelley  savors 
somewhat  of  the  ridiculous,  as  Mr.  Arnold 
intimates. 

But  to  whom  else  could  he  apply?  Words- 
worth, it  is  true,  had  written  most  of  his  best 
poetry  and  Shelley  had  read  it,  but  was  not 
Wordsworth,  too,  bitten  by  the  revolutionary 
frenzy,  and  did  not  Shelley  address  him  a 
very  mournful  sonnet  when  the  elder  poet 
began  to  show  signs  of  increasing  conserva- 
tism? Southey  too  he  had  read  and  liked 
—  but  could  Southey  help  him,  especially 
after  they  became  personally  acquainted? 
Could  Coleridge  have  helped  him  as  he 
afterwards  claimed  that  he  could?  Were 
Walter  Scott's  delightful  poems  likely  to  con- 
tain the  antidote  to  revolutionary  views,  or 
the  youthful  poems  of  Byron?  No  —  there 
was  not  one  living  author  in  England  who 
could  have  done  him  good,  but  there  was 
one  who  did  him  infinite  harm. 

It  would  not  profit  us  to  consider  here  how 
the  thin  speculations  of  William  Godwin  at- 
tained their  astonishing  vogue,  or  to  analyze 
those  speculations,  interesting  as  the  task 
would  prove.  Godwin  was  a  man  of  un- 
54 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

doubted  talents,  as  any  one  that  has  read 
Caleb  Williams  or  St.  Leon  will  admit,  and 
the  impossible  anarchistic  and  free  love  the- 
ories of  his  "  Political  Justice "  were  cer- 
tainly presented  with  no  little  power.  They 
were  just  such  theories  as  suited  the  vision- 
ary, sympathetic,  and  revolutionary  youth 
who  had  outraged  his  father  and  his  teachers ; 
and  when  Shelley  took  up  a  theory  he  acted 
on  it  except  when  he  could  see  plainly  that 
it  hurt  another.  Nor  could  Shelley  take  up 
a  theory  without  endeavoring  to  make  prose- 
lytes to  it,  and  so  we  see  his  star  surely  and 
by  inevitable  necessity  drawing  into  its  orbit 
that  milder  star  that  was  soon  to  be  lost  to 
the  sky  —  the  star  of  the  unfortunate  woman 
whose  name  is  forever  linked  with  his. 

But  why  pursue  the  harrowing  story? 
Could  the  ill-sorted  union  of  a  revolutionary 
young  aristocrat  destitute  of  common  sense 
and  a  half  atheistical,  half  evangelical  young 
female  of  low  extraction  and  romantic  aspira- 
tions have  any  other  ending  than  that  cold 
grave  in  the  Serpentine?  Blame  Shelley  as 
much  as  we  will  —  and  he  deserves  blame  — 
we  shall  still  find  back  of  the  whole  sad  story 
just  what  we  shall  find  back  of  the  expulsion 
from  Oxford,  back  of  his  sickening  love  af- 
fairs, back  of  every  foolish  and  uncanny  ac- 
55 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

tion  of  his  life,  that  terrible  lack  of  common 
wisdom  which  results  always,  or  nearly  al- 
ways, from  an  unpropitious  environment. 

But  when  Shelley  separated  himself  from 
Harriet,  did  he  find  the  environment  he 
needed  ?  How  could  he  with  Godwin  for  a 
father-in-law  —  Godwin  ever  whining  and  beg- 
ging, a  most  grasping  philosopher  in  spite  of 
his  doctrines  of  equality  —  with  poor  Fanny 
Imlay  (Mary  Shelley's  half  sister)  commit- 
ting suicide  for  love,  it  is  said,  of  her  poet 
brother-in-law  —  with  Jane  Claremont  and 
her  unhappy  intrigue  with  Lord  Byron  — 
with  Byron  himself  plunged  in  dissipation 
and  sick  of  life?  Some  of  these  were,  we 
may  suspect,  worse  for  him  than  Harriet's 
sister,  that  Eliza  with  the  pock-marked  face 
and  the  shock  of  hair,  who  kept  all  the 
money  of  the  establishment  in  her  own 
pocket,  whom  Shelley  first  loved  and  finally 
execrated  in  the  following  language :  "  I 
sometimes  feel  faint  with  the  fatigue  of 
checking  the  overflowings  of  my  unbounded 
abhorrence  for  this  miserable  wretch." 

This  is  a  little  strong  even  when  it  is 
written  about  a  sister-in-law.  Poor  Shelley  — 
he  was  always,  to  use  a  homely  metaphor, 
jumping  from  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire 
with  regard  to  the  "  company  he  kept,"  es- 
56 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

pecially  the  women.  At  first  sight  his  new 
acquaintances  are  divine,  in  six  months  they 
are  made  of  the  commonest  clay.  Who  will 
ever  forget  that  Miss  Hitchener  with  whom 
he  began  a  platonic  correspondence,  whom 
he  persuaded  to  break  up  her  school  and 
take  up  her  residence  with  him  and  Harriet, 
whose  praises  he  sounded  under  the  poetic 
name  of  Portia,  though  she  was  really  Eliza 
the  Second,  whom  finally  he  wound  up  by 
calling  the  "  Brown  Demon  "  and  by  bribing 
her  to  leave  his  house.  Was  such  a  man 
sane? 

But  Shelley  did  make  one  great,  one  ines- 
timable gain  by  his  connection  with  Godwin. 
He  gained  a  noble  and  sympathetic  woman 
for  his  wife  —  a  woman  who  was  to  share  his 
trials,  soothe  his  wounded  and  weary  spirit, 
and  finally  after  his  death  to  plead  success- 
fully with  a  cold  world  for  his  memory.  This 
was  much  more  than  he  had  a  right  to  ask, 
and  so  his  last  years  were  far  happier  than  he 
had  any  right  to  expect.  Indeed  after  the 
soul-harrowing  struggle  which  he  made  to 
retain  his  children  by  his  first  wife,  through- 
out the  whole  period  of  his  second  visit  to 
Italy,  Shelley's  environment  was  in  most  re- 
spects all  that  his  better  nature  could  have 
desired.  Byron  grew  to  love  him  and  so 
57 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

avoided  shocking  him  or  exerting  much,  if 
any,  deleterious  influence  upon  him;  the 
Williamses,  the  Gisbornes,Medwin,  Trelawny, 
Peacock,  Leigh  Hunt  were  pleasant  compan- 
ions, and  Mary  Shelley  was  the  noblest  of 
wives.  But  for  the  silly  episode  of  Emilia 
Viviani,  these  Italian  days  of  Shelley  were  as 
sunshiny  and  pure  as  Italian  days  should 
ever  be.  He  was  maturing  in  his  powers, 
had  refined  the  crudity  of  many  of  his  earlier 
theories,  and  with  renewed  health  might  have 
looked  forward  to  accomplishing  work  that 
would  have  thrown  in  the  shade  his  previous 
labors  in  song,  when  by  an  unhappy  accident, 
or  perhaps  a  despicable  crime,  he  was  sent  to 
meet  his  death  in  the  bosom  of  that  element 
he  had  loved  so  well. 

But  we  have  assuredly  dwelt  long  enough 
on  Shelley's  unfavorable  environment,  and  we 
are,  some  of  us,  doubtless  prepared  to  admit 
with  Mr.  Arnold  that  Shelley  was  not  en- 
tirely sane.  We  shall  hardly  look  upon  him 
as  a  spawn  of  Satan,  but  we  shall  wish  that 
he  could  have  been  blessed  with  more  com- 
mon sense.  There  is,  however,  another  side 
of  Shelley's  life  and  character  which  we  have 
as  yet  only  glanced  at  and  which  we  must 
now  consider  at  more  length,  although  we 
can  by  no  means  give  it  the  attention  it 
58 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

deserves.  Unless  we  bring  this  side  into 
view,  we  shall  fail  to  comprehend  at  all  how 
Shelley  has  come  by  his  many  admirers,  per- 
haps I  should  say,  his  many  worshippers. 

As  I  have  already  stated,  Shelley  was 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  and  lovable  of 
men.  Even  his  bizarre  and  uncanny  pecul- 
iarities strengthened  the  charm  that  he  ex- 
erted on  cynics  like  Byron,  cool  common- 
sense  persons  like  Hogg,  dilettante,  natures 
like  Hunt,  and  pure,  sweet  enthusiasts  like 
Mary  Godwin.  But  Shelley's  charm  did  not 
proceed  from  his  eccentricities,  or  from  the 
magic  of  his  conversation,  or  from  the  glow 
reflected  upon  him  from  the  enchanted  at- 
mosphere of  fanciful  thought  and  feeling  in 
which  he  moved  habitually.  Shelley's  charm 
came  from  the  essential  simplicity  of  his  char- 
acter, a  statement  which  will  appear  paradoxi- 
cal to  those  who  have  been  chiefly  struck  by 
the  complexity  of  the  problems  connected 
with  the  poet's  life.  They  will  recognize  at 
once  that  it  is  a  paradox,  for  nothing  can  be 
more  clearly  established  than  the  fact  that 
Shelley's  was  an  essentially  simple  nature. 
And  by  simple  I  mean,  of  course,  sine  plica, 
without  a  fold,  a  straightforward  nature  aiming 
to  put  itself  in  harmony  with  the  universe,  not 
a  doubling,  dissimulating  nature,  in  spite  of 
59 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

Mr.  Jeaffreson's  charges  and  of  Shelley's  own 
inconsistencies  of  statement,  never  in  perfect 
harmony  even  with  itself.  Shelley's  nature 
can  be  summed  up  in  one  word  —  love.  He 
loved  man  in  the  most  thoroughgoing  sense 
of  that  great  and  often  misused  word  "phil- 
anthropy "  —  he  loved  beauty  whether  in 
woman,  or  flower,  or  wave,  or  sky,  or  in  the 
creations  of  art,  or  in  the  abstractions  of  the 
human  mind.  But  a  simple,  perfect  love  does 
not  dominate  the  world  of  thought  alone,  it 
dominates  the  world  of  action  also.  Hence 
Shelley's  whole  life  was  given  up  to  deeds  of 
love,  to  obeying  the  promptings  of  the  spirit 
that  swayed  him.  But  mark  how  the  very 
nobility  and  simplicity  of  his  nature  betrayed 
him  when  he  sought  to  put  it  into  action, 
how  it  led  his  sun-fed  and  light-sustained 
body  through  the  thorns  and  briers  of  life. 
Every  action  implies  a  subject  and  an  object, 
and  for  an  action  to  be  good  it  must  be  in 
harmony  with  the  essential  nature  of  both 
subject  and  object  Yet  how  is  the  subject 
to  know  that  an  action  which  is  in  entire  har- 
mony with  it  will  be  in  entire  harmony  with 
the  object  toward  which  it  is  directed  ?  There 
is  no  possible  way  of  arriving  at  this  knowl- 
edge except  the  rough  way  which  we  call 
gaining  wisdom  or  common  sense.  Some 
60 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

^ 

natures  seem,  indeed,  to  have  an  intuition  of 
the  rightfulness  or  the  wrongfulness  of  ac- 
tions, and  to  them  Wordsworth  refers  in  his 
noble  Ode  to  Duty  as 

"  Glad  hearts  without  reproach  or  blot 
Who  do  thy  work  and  know  it  not." 

But  this  intuition  will  not  answer  long  in  our 
jarring  world,  and  Wordsworth  recognizes  the 
fact  when  he  prays :  — 

"  Long  may  the  kindly  impulse  last ; 
But  thou,  if  they  should  totter,  teach  them  to 
stand  fast." 

The  duty,  however,  which  Wordsworth 
prays  to  cannot  well  be  separated  from  what 
we  also  know  as  wisdom  and,  under  humbler 
circumstances,  as  common  sense.  Shelley, 
therefore,  if  he  was  to  obey  the  promptings 
of  the  spirit  that  swayed  him  —  that  exquisite 
spirit  of  love  with  which  he  was  more  com- 
pletely "  interpenetrated  "  than  any  other  child 
of  man  has  been  in  these  latter  days — needed 
of  all  men  to  have  wisdom  to  guide  him  in 
his  actions ;  because  being  so  conscious  of 
the  purity  of  his  own  motives,  he  was  the  less 
likely  to  pause  and  consider  whether  his  ac- 
tions would  redound  to  the  good  of  his  fellow 
men  and  women.  Here,  alas !  was  the  rock 
61 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

on  which  Shelley  split  —  he  had  no  com- 
mon sense,  he  had  little  practical  wisdom,  cer- 
tainly in  his  earlier  years,  and  he  had  an 
uncontrollable  longing  to  follow  the  impulses 
of  his  nature.  What  wonder  that  he  wrecked 
his  life  in  whirlpools,  what  wonder  that  in  his 
own  beautiful,  self-depicting  words  — 

"  He  fled  astray 

With  feeble  steps  o'er  the  world's  wilderness, 
And  his  own  thoughts,  along  that  rugged  way, 
Pursued,  like  raging  hounds,  their  father  and  their 
prey." 

It  is  this  inability  of  Shelley's  to  regulate 
his  actions  that  Mr.  Arnold  refers  to  when  he 
speaks  of  Shelley's  lack  of  humor  and  his 
self-delusion.  Shelley  was  always  pursuing 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  and 
since  he  had  not  wisdom  to  guide  him,  he 
was  continually  thinking  that  he  had  found 
those  desirable  qualities  embodied  in  some 
one  person  who  sooner  or  later  turned  out 
to  be  an  idol  of  clay.  Having  imagined  that 
Emilia  Viviani  embodied  them,  he  must 
forsooth  become  her  slave  and  write  that 
wonderful  Epipsychidion  in  which  he  de- 
clared that  she  was  the  sun  of  his  life, 
while  his  faithful  and  noble  wife,  Mary,  was 
the  moon.  He  did  not  stop  for  a  moment 
62 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

to  think  that  what  he  had  written  affected 
two  women  injuriously  —  making  one  silly 
woman  sillier,  and  rendering  a  true  and  de- 
serving woman  temporarily  unhappy.  So 
it  was  with  the  unfortunate  Harriet.  Shelley 
could  not  see  that  the  theories  which  were 
for  the  time  true  for  him,  were  very  bad 
theories  with  which  to  inoculate  a  by  no 
means  strong-minded  girl  of  sixteen.  Never- 
theless, he  proceeds  to  inoculate  her,  marries 
her  without  loving  her,  deserts  her  because 
he  has  found  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the 
good  embodied  in  Mary  Godwin,  and  then 
invites  her  to  come  and  live  with  Mary  and 
himself  because  he  has  no  idea  that  he 
has  done  anything  wrong.  He  has  simply 
followed  the  promptings  of  the  spirit  he 
served,  but  he  has  followed  them  without 
exercising  his  common  sense.  In  other 
words  he  has  shown  a  lack  of  humor,  a  self- 
delusion  that  are  astounding. 

But  there  are  often  times  when  a  lack  of 
humor  and  a  self-delusion  that  are  astound- 
ing do  not  prevent  a  man  like  Shelley  from 
moving  like  an  angel  among  his  fellow  men. 
Think  of  him  visiting  the  huts  of  the  poor  at 
Marlow,  tending  the  sick,  distributing  money 
and  food  to  them,  actually  walking  a  hospital 
that  he  may  learn  for  their  benefit  something 
63 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

of  practical  medicine.  Think  of  the  oph- 
thalmia caught  in  his  constant  ministrations 
to  the  sick,  think  of  his  subscriptions  to 
public  charities,  think  of  his  sweet  treatment 
of  the  importunate  Godwin,  think  of  his 
sympathy  for  every  living  thing,  man  or 
beast,  and  then  say  if  your  heart  does  not 
glow  toward  this  man.  Even  his  rash  pil- 
grimages for  the  emancipation  of  Ireland 
cease  to  be  ridiculous  when  we  remember 
the  noble  love  of  liberty  that  prompted 
them,  when  we  remember  that  many  of  the 
reforms  he  proposed  have  been  since  carried 
out  by  the  peaceful  means  he  advised.  We 
have,  of  course,  to  set  against  this  ideal, 
angelic  Shelley,  the  silly,  almost  demoniac 
Shelley  raging  at  kings  and  statesmen  and 
priests  with  a  wearisome  iteration.  But  this 
uncontrolled  hatred  of  customs  and  institu- 
tions that  most  men  cherish  was  but  another 
manifestation  of  Shelley's  spirit  of  love  un- 
controlled by  wisdom.  Love  for  mankind 
was  for  him  inextricably  bound  up  with  love 
for  liberty,  and  love  for  liberty  with  intense 
natui  es  means  hate  for  tyranny ;  but  Shelley 
had  not  the  wisdom  to  see  that  too  often 
what  he  called  liberty  was  simply  license. 
Hence  his  ravings  and  hence  our  paradox 
that  his  hatred  of  kings  was  only  a  manifes- 
64 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

tation  of  his  spirit  of  unbounded  love. 
But  a  spirit  of  unbounded  love  will  have 
worshippers  to  the  end  of  time. 

This  subject  has  fascination  enough,  how- 
ever, to  keep  us  pursuing  it  indefinitely,  and 
we  may  as  well  pass  on.  It  is  impossible 
to  compass  even  the  salient  points  of 
Shelley's  life  and  character  in  an  essay:  but 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  we  have  done  enough 
to  enable  us  to  approach  his  poetry  in  a 
sufficiently  critical  but  at  the  same  time 
friendly  mood. 


III.    THE  POEMS. 

IN  discussing  Shelley's  work  as  a  writer  it 
will  be  well  for  us  to  confine  ourselves  to 
his  original  poetry.  If  this  were  a  treatise 
instead  of  an  essay  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  devote  more  than  one  chapter  to  setting 
forth  his  merits  as  a  translator  of  poetry  and 
as  a  writer  of  distinguished  and  charming 
prose.  We  need  not  yield  even  to  Mr. 
Arnold  himself  in  our  admiration  for  Shelley 
in  these  two  capacities,  although  we  may 
not  share  the  great  critic's  opinion  that  it 
is  as  a  translator  and  a  prose  writer  that 
posterity  will  chiefly  appreciate  one  who  is 
5  65 


APROPOS   OF  SHELLEY 

very  frequently  styled  at  present  "  the  poets' 
poet." 

I  know  of  nothing  in  the  realm  of  poeti- 
cal translation  that  approaches  the  delight- 
ful and  inimitable  Hymn  to  Mercury  or 
the  equally  inimitable,  though  to  me  less 
charming,  scenes  from  the  masterpieces 
of  Calderon  and  Goethe.  Nor  do  I  sup- 
pose that  in  its  way  Shelley's  nervous 
prose  with  its  individual  rhythm  and  its 
almost  invariably  sound  and  sane  content 
can  easily  find  an  equal.  When  he  aban- 
dons himself  to  the  looser  measures  of 
rhythmic  prose,  when  his  inspiration  ceases 
to  master  him  and  he  masters  his  own 
genius,  he  displays  a  tact,  a  sureness  of 
touch  that  almost  make  us  forget  the  lack 
of  wisdom  and  of  grasp  upon  reality  that 
are  so  painfully  apparent  in  his  life  and,  I 
may  add,  although  this  is  somewhat  fore- 
stalling matters,  in  his  original  poetry.  But 
no  translator,  no  prose  writer,  however  distin- 
guished, can  claim  the  place  in  literature  that 
is  always  ungrudgingly  assigned  to  the  emin- 
ently original  poet,  and  Shelley's  wor- 
shippers have  never  been  willing  to  forgo 
pressing  his  claims  for  the  higher  place. 
Here  is  the  true  crux  of  Shelleyan  criti- 
cism, and  it  is  to  the  question  of  Shelley's 
66 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

position  as  an  original  poet  that  for  the 
present  at  least  the  energies  of  his  critics 
must  be  directed. 

To  a  superficial  observer  the  question 
would  seem,  at  first  sight,  if  not  to  have 
solved  itself  with  time,  to  be  at  any  rate  in 
a  fair  way  of  doing  so.  Shelley's  star  has 
been  steadily  rising  ever  since  his  death. 
In  his  life  he  found  few  admirers,  and 
Byron,  Moore,  and  even  many  whose  names 
are  now  almost  forgotten,  eclipsed  him  in 
critical  as  well  as  in  popular  favor.  Soon, 
however,  his  admirers  became  more  numer- 
ous and  bolder.  The  uncanny  events  of  his 
life  were  viewed  in  a  soberer  and  fairer 
light,  and  his  work  received  more  impartial 
criticism.  The  sun  of  Byron  began  to  pale 
before  the  rising  sun  of  Tennyson  as  after 
a  period  of  revolution  and  stormy  passions 
the  world  began  to  sigh  for  the  peace  of 
conservatism  and  the  luxury  of  allowing 
play  to  calm  emotions  and  delicate  sensi- 
bilities. This  desire  for  calm  and  the  lib- 
erty and  equality  which  had  been  made  an 
influential  aspiration,  if  not  an  achieved 
possession,  of  the  human  spirit,  produced 
a  type  of  civilization  characterized  by  many 
distinctively  feminine  traits.  Gentleness, 
receptivity  to  sentiments  and  ideas,  a  rec- 
67 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

ognition  of  the  virtue  and  power  that  lie 
in  patient  forbearance  and  pathetic  weak- 
ness, these  and  many  other  distinctively 
feminine  traits  began  to  dominate  the  world 
and  have  continued  to  dominate  it.  Natur- 
ally the  effects  of  this  change  of  the  world's 
spirit  were  seen  in  literature,  and  Tennyson's 
Princess  may  be  taken  as  its  first  fairly  ade- 
quate expression.  But  obviously  this  change 
was  in  favor  of  Shelley  and  to  the  detri- 
ment of  Byron.  The  poet  of  stormy  pas- 
sions, of  intense,  over-weening  masculinity, 
was  out  of  touch  with  this  new  world  ;  the  poet 
who  preached  love  to  man  and  beast  and 
flower,  who  spun  rainbow-hued  visions  of  the 
speedy  advent  of  a  golden  age  of  harmony 
and  peace,  whose  character  even,  when  closely 
examined,  was  found  to  be  in  many  respects 
that  of  a  feminine  angel  —  if  angels  may 
be  said  to  distribute  themselves  between 
the  sexes  —  became  more  and  more  a  sub- 
ject for  veneration  and  love  to  the  advanced 
and  enlightened  spirits  of  the  new  rdgime. 
The  populace  took  to  Tennyson  and  Long- 
fellow, but  the  critics  and  the  ultras  of  all 
shades  took  to  Shelley,  with  here  and  there 
an  aesthete  who  preferred  Keats,  or  some 
more  ambitious  prober  of  mysteries  who 
gave  his  allegiance  to  Browning.  Then 
68 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

came  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement  in  paint- 
ing and  poetry  which  naturally  worked  in 
favor  of  a  hazy  poet  and  under  the  influences 
of  which  the  best  of  our  younger  critics 
have  been  reared. 

So  the  fact  appears  to  be  that  time  is  set- 
tling the  value  of  Shelley's  poetry  for  us, 
since  if  the  critics  cleave  to  him  long  enough, 
they  will  eventually  bring  the  people  to  him. 
It  is  seldom  that  an  author  remains  indefi- 
nitely balanced  between  critical  appreciation 
and  popular  indifference.  Landor  seems  to 
hang  thus  suspended,  but  as  a  rule  either  the 
people  will  bring  the  critics  to  their  view  of 
the  matter,  as  in  the  case  of  Bunyan,  or  the 
critics  will  educate  the  people  to  a  more  or 
less  willing  acceptance  of  the  views  of  the 
enlightened,  as  seems  now  to  be  the  case  with 
Browning.  If  the  critics  as  a  class  continue 
to  stand  by  Shelley,  his  cause  may  fairly  be 
considered  as  won.  But  although  such  a 
stout  phalanx  as  Swinburne,  Dowden,  Sharp, 
the  Rossettis,  Saintsbury,  Symonds,  Wood- 
berry,  Garnett,  Myers,  Forman,  Stopford 
Brooke,  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  Andrew 
Lang,  Thomas  S.  Baynes,  and  a  host  of 
others,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Shelley  Society, 
has  stood  by  and  is  still  standing  by  Shelley, 
there  is  one  voice  of  dissent  that  makes  itself 
69 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

heard,  a  voice  potent  enough  to  arrest  our 
attention  and  to  awaken  our  interest.  It  is 
the  voice  of  the  greatest  English  critic  of  this 
century,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Col- 
eridge, Mr.  Matthew  Arnold. 

But  what  is  one  man  against  so  many,  one 
will  ask?  Not  much,  I  answer,  for  the  pres- 
ent, but  a  great  deal  for  the  future  if  he  hap- 
pens to  have  truth  on  his  side,  and  if  he  has 
recorded  himself  with  sufficient  fulness;  for 
the  value  of  the  rest  of  his  critical  work  is 
bound  to  lend  some  authority  to  his  most 
extreme  utterance  even  when  this  seems  to  be 
opposed  to  the  judgment  of  the  wisest  of  his 
contemporaries.  It  is  the  voice  which  is  at 
first  drowned  in  the  discord  of  dissent  or  cen- 
sure that  in  the  majority  of  cases  is  heard 
full  and  clear  by  the  generations  that  follow. 
Can  we  be  sure  that  this  will  not  be  the  case 
with  Arnold's  utterances  as  to  Shelley?  For 
my  part,  even  if  I  had  committed  myself  as 
a  pronounced  Shelleyan,  even  if  I  had  written 
a  commentary  in  the  most  approved  modern 
style  on  a  single  passage  in  the  works  of  my 
favorite,  I  should  still  deep  down  in  my 
heart  feel  a  dread  of  the  future  when  I  listened 
to  the  clear  yet  calm  voice  of  such  a  dissent- 
ing critic  as  Matthew  Arnold.  And  his 
uniqueness,  the  fact  of  his  standing  alone,  of 
70 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

his  unflinching  boldness  of  utterance  would 
increase  the  dread,  for  it  is  just  such  unique 
and  bold  utterances  that  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  win  the  suffrages  of  posterity.  At  any 
rate,  being  no  pronounced  Shelleyan  I  pro- 
pose to  give  Mr.  Arnold  a  more  respectful 
hearing  in  the  following  pages  than  he  has 
usually  had  at  the  hands  of  modern  critics. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  to  examine 
Arnold's  views  it  may  be  well  for  us  to  re- 
member that  he  was  not  handicapped  in  his 
criticism  of  Shelley,  as  Kingsley  was,  by  his 
own  more  or  less  intimate  dependence  upon 
the  established  order  of  things.  Arnold  was, 
if  not  as  blatantly,  nevertheless  as  completely 
at  discord  with  orthodox  Christianity  as 
Shelley  was.  It  is  open  to  grave  doubt 
whether  he  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  which  Shelley  certainly  did.  Arnold 
was  also  a  republican  at  heart  and  a  believer 
in  equality,  even  if  he  did  not  rave  against 
kings  and  statesmen  with  conservative  lean- 
ings. He  was  furthermore  a  product  with 
Shelley,  though  a  more  ripened  product,  of 
the  liberal,  the  European  movement  in  liter- 
ature which  received  its  initial  impulse  from 
Goethe.  He  was  therefore  not  unqualified 
either  by  nature  or  by  training  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment upon  Shelley. 

71 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

It  would  not  be  possible  nor  would  it  be 
desirable  to  cite  here  all  Arnold's  obiter  dicta 
respecting  Shelley's  poetry — he  did  not  live 
to  write  his  promised  essay  about  it  —  hence 
I  shall  content  myself  with  quoting  three 
passages  from  his  writings  that  set  forth  his 
views  with  sufficient  fulness,  reserving  my 
own  discussion  of  Shelley's  poems  until  we 
have  felt  the  full  force  of  the  most  weighty 
indictment  that  has  been  brought  against 
them. 

A  lucid  statement  of  one  of  Arnold's  chief 
charges  against  Shelley  as  a  poet  occurs  in  the 
essay  on  Maurice  de  Guerin : 

"  I  have  said  that  poetry  interprets  in  two 
ways ;  it  interprets  by  expressing  with  magi- 
cal felicity  the  physiognomy  and  movement  of 
the  outward  world,  and  it  interprets  by  ex- 
pressing with  inspired  conviction  the  ideas 
and  laws  of  the  inward  world  of  man's  moral 
and  spiritual  nature.  In  other  words,  poetry 
is  interpretative  both  by  having  natural  magic 
in  it,  and  by  having  moral  profundity.  In 
both  ways  it  illuminates  man ;  it  gives  him  a 
satisfying  sense  of  reality;  it  reconciles  him 
with  himself  and  the  universe.  .  .  .  Shak- 
spere  interprets  both  when  he  says, 

"  '  Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain-tops  with  sovran  eye  ; ' 
72 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

and  when  he  says, 

"  '  There 's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will.' 

.  .  .  Great  poets  unite  in  themselves  the  faculty 
of  both  kinds  of  interpretation,  the  naturalistic 
and  the  moral.  But  it  is  observable  that  in 
the  poets  who  unite  both  kinds,  the  latter 
(the  moral)  usually  ends  by  making  itself  the 
master.  In  Shakspere  the  two  kinds  seem 
wonderfully  to  balance  one  another ;  but  even 
in  him  the  balance  leans ;  his  expression  tends 
to  become  too  little  sensuous  and  simple,  too 
much  intellectualized.  The  same  thing  may 
be  yet  more  strongly  affirmed  of  Lucretius 
and  Wordsworth.  In  Shelley  there  is  not  a 
balance  of  the  two  gifts,  nor  even  a  coexist- 
ence of  them  both,  but  there  is  a  passionate 
straining  after  them  both,  and  this  is  what 
makes  Shelley,  as  a  man,  so  interesting:  I 
will  not  inquire  how  much  Shelley  achieves 
as  a  poet,  but  whatever  he  achieves,  he  in 
general  fails  to  achieve  natural  magic  in  his 
expression;  in  Mr.  Palgrave's  charming 
Treasury  may  be  seen  a  whole  gallery  of  his 
failures." 

To  this  passage  Mr.  Arnold  added  a  foot- 
note contrasting  Shelley's  Lines  Written  in 
the    Euganean    Hills   with    Keats's    Ode    to 
73 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

Autumn  as  follows:  "The  latter  piece  ren- 
ders Nature,  the  former  tries  to  render  her. 
I  will  not  deny,  however,  that  Shelley  has 
natural  magic  in  his  rhythm ;  what  I  deny  is, 
that  he  has  it  in  his  language.  It  always 
seems  to  me  that  the  right  sphere  for  Shelley's 
genius  was  the  sphere  of  music,  not  of  poetry ; 
the  medium  of  sounds  he  can  master,  but  to 
master  the  more  difficult  medium  of  words, 
he  has  neither  intellectual  force  enough,  nor 
sanity  enough." 

Passing  over  other  interesting  but  not  es- 
pecially important  references  to  Shelley,  we 
come  to  the  concluding  paragraphs  of  the 
noble  essay  on  The  Study  of  Poetry  which 
was  prefixed  to  Ward's  "  Selections."  Arnold 
has  been  speaking  of  the  wholesomeness  of 
much  of  Burns's  poetry  and  suddenly  he  ex- 
claims with  a  warning  voice  :  "  For  the  votary 
misled  by  a  personal  estimate  of  Shelley,  as 
so  many  of  us  have  been,  are,  and  will  be  —  of 
that  beautiful  spirit  building  his  many-colored 
haze  of  words  and  images 

'  Pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense  inane  ' 

no  contact  can  be  wholesomer  than  the  con- 
tact with  Burns  at  his  archest  and  soundest." 
And  he  proceeds  to  point  his  warning 
by  contrasting  four  lines  from  the  "  Prome- 

74 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

theus  Unbound  with   four   lines   from   Tarn 
Glen. 

Finally  from  the  Essay  on  Byron  we  may 
take  our  last  quotation :  "  I  cannot  think 
that  Shelley's  poetry  except  by  snatches  and 
fragments,  has  the  value  of  the  good  work  of 
Wordsworth  and  Byron.  .  .  .  Shelley  knew 
quite  well  the  difference  between  the  achieve- 
ment of  such  a  poet  as  Byron  and  his  own. 
He  praises  Byron  too  unreservedly,  but  he 
felt,  and  he  was  right  in  feeling,  that  Byron 
was  a  greater  poetical  power  than  himself. 
As  a  man,  Shelley  is  at  a  number  of  points  im- 
measurably Byron's  superior;  he  is  a  beauti- 
ful and  enchanting  spirit,  whose  vision,  when 
we  call  it  up,  has  far  more  loveliness,  more 
charm  for  our  soul,  than  the  vision  of  Byron. 
But  all  the  personal  charm  of  Shelley  cannot 
hinder  us  from  at  last  discovering  in  his 
poetry  the  incurable  want,  in  general,  of  a 
sound  subject  matter,  and  the  incurable  fault, 
in  consequence,  ot  unsubstantiality.  Those 
who  extol  him  as  the  poet  of  clouds,  the 
poet  of  sunsets,  are  only  saying  that  he  did 
not,  in  fact,  lay  hold  upon  the  poet's  right 
subject-matter ;  and  in  honest  truth,  with  all 
his  charm  of  soul  and  spirit,  and  with  all  his 
gift  of  musical  diction  and  movement,  he 
never,  or  hardly  ever,  did  .  .  ."  The  rest 
75 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

of  this  passage  containing  Mr.  Arnold's 
praise  of  the  translations  and  prose  works 
need  not  be  cited,  but  it  may  be  remarked 
that  it  is  at  the  close  of  this  essay  on  Byron 
that  the  famous  phrase  which  has  been  already 
quoted  first  occurs :  "  Shelley,  beautiful  and 
ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the  void  his 
luminous  wings  in  vain."  When  some  years 
after  he  had  occasion  to  repeat  this  phrase 
Arnold  underscored  the  word  ineffectual. 

And  now  I  think  we  can  form  a  pretty 
plain  idea  of  the  nature  of  the  charges  that 
his  greatest  critic  has  made  against  Shelley's 
poetry.  If  they  are  not  ruthless,  they  may 
certainly  be  termed  vital.  If  Arnold  is  right, 
Shelley  cannot  be  a  great  poet  of  the  highest 
rank.  We  see  also  that  Arnold's  charges 
may  be  summed  up  very  briefly.  Shelley's 
poetry  does  not  show  moral  profundity  though 
it  shows  a  straining  after  it ;  it  does  not  show 
natural  magic  in  its  language  although  it 
does  show  it  in  its  musical  rhythm ;  it  lacks 
a  sound  subject-matter  and  hence  is  charac- 
terized by  the  incurable  fault  of  unsubstan- 
tiality.  This  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
Arnold's  criticism,  and  the  important  question 
for  us  now  is  —  can  this  criticism  be  deemed 
just?  There  is  only  one  way  to  test  it  and 
that  is  to  read  Shelley's  chief  poems  in  the 
76 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

light  or  the  darkness  of  Arnold's  dicta,  and 
then  sum  up  our  fresh  impressions  and  form 
our  judgments  accordingly.  It  would  be 
better  still  if  my  reader  were  able  to  do 
as  I  did  —  viz.,  re-read  all  Shelley's  poems 
several  years  after  reading  Arnold's  strictures 
and  then  re-read  the  strictures  in  the  light  of 
the  poetry.  Few  probably  who  have  done  this 
will  find  themselves  so  nearly  in  accord  with 
the  critic  as  I  did,  and  fewer  still  will  in  read- 
ing The  Revolt  of  Islam  rediscover  Shel- 
ley's lack  of  natural  magic  in  his  language 
without  sufficient  recollection  of  Arnold's 
essay  to  enable  them  to  give  their  rediscov- 
ery a  proper  name.  But  now  let  us  turn  to 
the  poems  themselves,  omitting  the  juvenile 
works  and  beginning  with  Alastor. 

Many  critics  go  into  ecstasies  over  this 
semi-autobiographic  effusion  and  some  of  us 
when  sound  delighted  more  than  sense,  proba- 
bly went  wild  over  it  ourselves.  Now  unfor- 
tunately the  opening  lines  are  too  plainly 
suggestive  of  Wordsworth ;  the  famous  pas- 
sage beginning: 

"  His  wandering  step 
Obedient  to  high  thoughts  has  visited 
The  awful  ruins  of  the  days  of  old  : 
Athens,  and  Tyre,  and  Balbec,  and  the  waste 
Where  stood  Jerusalem  " 

77 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

is  grand,  but  with  the  grandeur  of  Milton  not 
of  Shelley;  the  straining  after  an  impossible 
ideal  is  pathetic  but  not  stimulating,  and  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  the  poem  is  unreal,  as 
unreal  as  the  poet's  geography.  Alastor  is 
chiefly  interesting  for  two  reasons  —  it  is 
autobiographic  and  Shelley  is  an  interesting 
character  and  it  has  a  fine,  I  may  say,  at 
times  a  superb  and  original  rhythmical  flow. 
But  a  poem  autobiographical  of  Shelley  could 
not  well  be  sane  —  could  not  have  a  sound 
subject-matter,  could  only  embody  a  strain- 
ing after  moral  profundity,  which  is  but  to 
confirm  Arnold's  sure  judgment.  It  is  its 
rhythm  only  that  lifts  it  out  of  the  mass  of 
immature  poetry  in  which  our  literature  is 
rich,  and  Arnold  is  not  backward  in  his  praise 
of  Shelley's  rhythm.  Alastor  may  be  dis- 
missed so  far  as  specific  criticism  is  con- 
cerned, with  the  remark  that  the  charge  so 
often  made  against  Byron  that  he  only  paints 
himself,  can  be  made  fully  as  justly  against 
Shelley,  and  that  Byron  at  least  describes  a 
strong  personality,  Shelley  a  weak  although 
a  pathetic  one. 

This  judgment,  which  I  confess  sounds 
harsh  and  irreverent,  but  is  made  in  all  sober- 
ness, may  be  illustrated  by  a  recurrence  to 
the  famous  if  somewhat  twisted  dictum  of 


APROPOS  OF  SHELLEY 

Milton  that  poetry  should  be  simple,  sensu- 
ous, impassioned.  Alastor,  and  indeed  all 
Shelley's  other  elaborate  poems,  fail  of  sim- 
plicity because  simplicity  implies  a  sound 
subject-matter  treated  by  a  sound  mind  and 
inevitably  appealing  to  all  other  sound  minds. 
Our  analysis  of  Shelley's  character,  however, 
forbade  us  to  hope  for  any  such  simplicity 
in  his  poetry,  for  we  saw  that  his  environ- 
ment had  failed  to  give  him  that  wisdom 
which  would  have  directed  his  essentially 
simple  nature  whether  in  its  actions  or  in  its 
poetical  self-delineations. 

Alastor  and  Shelley's  other  poems  are 
sensuous  in  one  respect  —  their  rhythm,  which 
can  be  proved  by  any  one  with  an  ear  for 
poetic  rhythm  and  which  justifies  Mr.  Swin- 
burne in  saying  that  Shelley  is  "  the  master 
singer  of  our  modern  poets  "  and  Mr.  Arnold 
in  speaking  of  Shelley's  genius  as  being  pe- 
culiarly suited  to  the  sphere  of  music.  But 
little  of  Shelley's  poetry  is  sensuous  in  its 
language  —  that  is  Shelley  as  a  rule  does 
not  by  a  single  felicitous  epithet,  phrase,  or 
verse  set  a  concrete  object  or  an  abstract 
quality  vividly  before  the  mind's  eye.  Shel- 
ley needs  a  mass  of  words  to  produce  his 
effects  —  hence  the  haziness  of  his  descrip- 
tions, which  nevertheless  have  at  times  just 
79 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

the  beauty  that  haziness  in  the  natural  world 
generally  gives.  Hence  it  comes  that  Shelley 
loves  to  give  us  clouds  and  sunsets  and  im- 
possible landscapes,  hence  it  is  that  few  great 
painters  have  ever,  to  my  knowledge,  been 
inspired  by  him,  and  hence  it  is,  that  compara- 
tively few  quotations  from  his  poems  are  fa- 
miliar to  ordinary  readers.  Even  a  eulogist 
like  Mr.  John  Addington  Symonds  has  to 
admit  this,  although  he  does  not  give  the 
reason  for  it,  when  he  quotes  Shelley's  famous 
lines  from  Julian  and  Maddalo, 

"  Most  wretched  men 
Are  cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong, 
They  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song." 

Even  here,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  Shelley 
is  nothing  if  not  autobiographic. 

But  finally,  to  return  to  Milton's  dictum, 
Alastor  and  the  rest  of  Shelley's  poems  are 
impassioned,  yet  only  in  the  lowest  sense  of 
the  word.  Shelley's  was  the  passion  of  weak- 
ness but  not  the  passion  of  strength.  Here 
is  the  true  cause  of  his  essential  inferiority  to 
Byron;  here  is  the  reason,  as  Mr.  Richard 
Holt  Hutton  well  showed,  why  Shelley's  poe- 
try is  not  sublime.  There  is  no  sublimity  with- 
out power  and  Shelley's  power  was  only  the 
pseudo-power  which  morbid  and  introspec- 
80 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

tive  people  can  discover  in  weakness.  We 
do  speak,  it  is  true,  of  sublime  patience  and 
the  like,  but  the  collocation  of  terms  is  an 
unfortunate  one  except  in  those  cases  when 
there  is  involved  with  the  patience  the  power 
of  acting  effectually  if  the  sufferer  choose. 
In  other  words,  it  is  difficult  not  to  agree 
with  Mr.  Hutton  that  there  can  be  no  sublim- 
ity without  power,  and  it  is  clear  that  the 
power  that  accompanies  patience  is  rarely 
the  positive  power  of  action  but  only  the 
negative  power  of  restraint.  But  all  Shelley's 
ideals  were  passive  —  he  even  preached  pas- 
sive revolutions — hence  his  poetry  is  not 
truly  impassioned,  it  does  not  flow  from  a 
powerful  nature  or  affect  other  natures  power- 
fully—  that  is,  it  tends  to  excite  sentiment 
rather  than  to  incite  to  action. 

The  above  criticism  of  Alastor  applies 
as  well  to  the  beautiful  poem  known  both  as 
Laon  and  Cythna  and  as  The  Revolt  of 
Islam.  Most  people  tire  of  this  poem,  be- 
cause of  its  impossible,  misty  and  rather 
wearisome  plot.  Even  professed  Shelleyans 
share  this  feeling,  and  while  pointing  out  the 
beauty  of  a  few  detached  passages  frankly 
admit  that  Shelley  had  no  qualifications  for 
the  r61e  of  a  narrative  poet.  We  need  qualify 
this  judgment  only  by  saying  that  in  all 
6  81 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

likelihood  Laon  and  Cythna  is  the  most 
continuous  stream  of  exquisite  and  delicate 
melody  ever  poured  upon  the  ears  of  the 
world  since  Spenser  left  the  Faerie  Queene 
unfinished.  Of  its  kind  I  know  nothing  like 
it  in  any  language  —  but  its  kind  I  must  con- 
fess is  musical,  not  poetical.  As  poetry  it  is 
as  full  of  flaws  as  any  poem  of  a  real  genius 
ever  was,  as  music,  as  a  song  without  con- 
crete meaning,  it  is  simply  wonderful.  It 
may  be  remarked  that  in  the  34th  stanza  of  the 
I  ith  canto  of  this  poem  we  find  one  of  the  few 
examples  of  a  truly  felicitous,  a  naturally 
magical  epithet  used  by  Shelley.  Such  an 
epithet  is  so  rare  that  it  must  be  quoted,  with 
the  caution,  however,  that  it  perhaps  con- 
tains a  reminiscence  of  Dr.  Donne. 

"  Thus  Cythna  taught 
Even  in  the  visions  of  her  eloquent  sleep." 

No  other  adjective  could  well  equal  the 
one  which  Shelley  has  here  used;  in  other 
words  it  is  inevitable,  i.  e.,  truly  poetic.  But, 
if  it  is  seldom  that  one  can  quote  such  a 
perfect  epithet  from  Shelley,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  quote  many  a  stanza  to  prove  his  perfect 
melodiousness.  Here  is  one. 

"  She  moved  upon  this  earth  a  shape  of  brightness, 
A  power,  that  from  its  objects  scarcely  drew 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

One  impulse  of  her  being  —  in  her  lightness 
Most  like  some  radiant  cloud  of  morning  dew, 
Which  wanders  thro'  the  waste  air's  pathless  blue, 
To  nourish  some  far  desert :  she  did  seem 
Like  the  bright  shade  of  some  immortal  dream 
Which  walks,  when  tempest  sleeps,  the  wave  of  life's 
dark  stream." 


As  poetry  this  is  feeble  because  there  is 
scarcely  a  word  that  clinches  the  object  it  is 
intended  to  represent  or  describe,  but  as 
music  it  is  little  less  than  divine. 

Passing  over  Rosalind  and  Helen  with 
the  remark  that  it  is  feeble  as  a  whole,  and 
less  good  in  its  parts  than  Shelley's  poems  are 
wont  to  be,  we  reach  the  celebrated  Lines 
Written  among  the  Euganean  Hills.  These 
I  like  better  than  Mr.  Arnold  did,  although 
I  recognize  that  they  are  far  less  artistic  than 
Keats  would  have  made  them.  I  recognize 
also  Shelley's  indebtedness  to  Milton  and 
perhaps  to  Dyer.  But  I  must  plead  that 
the  apostrophe  to  Venice  has  a  combination 
of  epic  and  lyric  grandeur  that  is  rarely  sur- 
passed and  that  deserves  a  grateful  remem- 
brance. One  may  note,  however,  that  both 
in  this  poem  and  in  the  famous  Hymn  to 
Intellectual  Beauty  which  follows  it,  there 
is  that  note  of  despairing  weakness  which  is 
so  characteristic  of  Shelley. 
83 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

Going  for  a  moment  past  The  Cenci,  we 
come  to  what  is  considered  by  many  of  his 
critics  to  be  Shelley's  most  important  work 
—  Prometheus  Unbound.  The  language 
that  has  been  applied  to  this  lyrical  drama 
would  certainly  not  be  too  weak  in  connec- 
tion with  The  Tempest  of  Shakspere  or  the 
Comus  of  Milton.  Mr.  Sharp  speaks  of 
"The  wonderful  melodies,  the  splendid  har- 
monies, all  the  music  and  magnificence  of 
Shelley's  greatest  production."  Mr.  Rossetti 
is  still  more  enthusiastic  when  he  grows 
eloquent  over  "  The  immense  scale  and 
boundless  scope  of  the  conception;  the 
marble  majesty  and  extra-mundane  passions 
of  the  personages ;  the  sublimity  of  ethical 
aspiration,  the  radiance  of  ideal  and  poetic 
beauty  which  saturates  every  phase  of  the 
subject,  and  almost  (as  it  were)  wraps  it  from 
sight  at  times,  and  transforms  it  out  of  sense 
into  spirit;  the  rolling  river  of  great  sound 
and  lyrical  rapture"  —  and  so  forth.  Mr.  J. 
A.  Symonds  went  so  far  as  to  declare  that 
"  a  genuine  liking  for  '  Prometheus  Un- 
bound '  may  be  reckoned  the  touchstone  of 
a  man's  capacity  for  understanding  lyric 
poetry."  On  the  other  hand  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  the  only  passage  of  Shelley,  so 
far  as  I  remember,  that  Matthew  Arnold 
84 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

undertook  to  condemn  specifically  came 
from  the  Prometheus  Unbound  and  that  it 
would  be  rash  to  maintain  that  a  poet  who 
had  written  such  lyrics  as  Arnold  was  not 
capable  of  understanding  lyric  poetry. 

The  truth  seems  to  me  to  lie  very  far  this 
side  of  the  unbounded  praise  that  has  just 
been  recorded.  Not  that  there  is  not  some 
foundation  for  this  praise,  but  that  it  is 
plainly  extravagant.  It  strikes  what  Arnold 
calls  somewhere  the  note  of  provinciality,  the 
note  of  shrill  assertion  that  that  which  we 
like  is  perfect  and  that  whoever  does  not  like 
it  is  a  fool.  I  shall  not  at  all  quarrel  with 
Mr.  Sharp's  "  wonderful  melodies "  and 
"  splendid  harmonies,"  for  they  surely  exist 
in  the  poem ;  but  I  should  like  to  point  out 
that  not  only  does  the  poet's  love  for  singing 
songs  without  sense  often  mar  his  work,  but 
that  his  facility  of  utterance  often  tempts  him 
to  strike  what  is  clearly  a  false  note,  as 
for  example  the  lines  quoted  by  Arnold 
beginning : 

"  On  the  brink  of  the  night  and  the  morning." 
or    what    to    my   mind    is    an    even    worse 
instance  of  a  thin  false  note,  the  chorus  of 
spirits  in  the  fourth  act,  beginning:  — 

We  come  from  the  mind 
Of  human  kind 

85 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

Which  was  late  so  dusk,  and  obscene,  and  blind  ; 

Now  't  is  an  ocean 

Of  clear  emotion, 
A  heaven  of  serene  and  mighty  motion. 

This  is  not  only  rendered  feeble  as  poetry 
from  its  straining  at  concrete  expression,  but 
it  is  also  rendered  thin  and  of  false  quality  as 
music  because  the  rhythm  does  not  harmon- 
ize with  its  content.  It  hardly  seems  ex- 
travagant to  say  that  there  are  more  false 
notes  struck  in  the  Prometheus  than  in  the 
rest  of  Shelley's  poems  taken  together. 

With  regard  to  what  may  be  called  the 
intellectual  claims  put  forth  for  this  poem 
which  has  been  edited  for  schools  and  been 
made  the  subject  of  essays  by  the  dozen,  I  can 
say  only  that,  however  true  they  may  be  when 
applied  to  special  passages,  they  are  by  no 
means  true  when  applied  to  the  drama  as  a 
whole.  The  fourth  act,  which  is  a  favorite 
with  the  Shelleyans,  seems  to  have  been  an 
afterthought,  and  is  a  most  lame  and  impo- 
tent conclusion.  The  characters  are,  except 
for  short  intervals,  vague,  misty  and  devoid 
of  personality.  The  solution  proposed  for 
the  problem  of  human  destiny,  for  the  freeing 
of  the  Promethean  spirit  of  man  is  as  impos- 
sible and  ineffectual  as  if  it  had  been  gener- 
ated in  the  heated  brain  of  a  maniac.  This 
86 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

great  poem  is  really  little  more  than  a  series  of 
wonderful  phantasmagoria  flashed  forth  upon 
the  curtain  of  the  reader's  mind  by  a  very 
unsteady  hand.  When  the  reader  voluntarily 
shuts  off  the  light,  i.  e.,  ceases  to  think  or 
judge,  the  effect  is  dazzling;  when  he  allows 
the  light  of  reason  to  play  upon  his  mind, 
the  effect  is  just  the  reverse.  I  admire  the 
Prometheus  Unbound  as  the  daring  and 
in  parts  splendid  achievement  of  a  brilliant, 
unbalanced,  but  nobly  poetic  nature ;  but  I 
cannot  admit  that  it  is  worthy  of  language 
which  would  be  hyperbolical  in  the  case  of 
any  other  poet  than  Shakspere  or  Milton. 

But  to  hasten  on.  With  Prometheus 
there  were  published  in  1820  at  least  four 
poems  that  have  assuredly  won  immortality  — 
the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  The  Cloud, 
The  Sensitive  Plant  and  To  a  Skylark. 
Some  would  add  to  these  the  Ode  to  Lib- 
erty, but  I  cannot,  if  for  no  other  reason,  on 
account  of  the  metrical  insufficiency  of  its 
stanzaic  form.  It  is  needless  for  me  to 
attempt  to  characterize  poems  which  have 
seized  the  world's  heart;  but  I  must  point 
out  that  to  my  mind  Shelley  is  in  one  of 
these  and  in  many  of  his  other  lyrics  more  a 
poet  of  the  fancy  than  of  the  imagination  — 
of  most  subtle  and  beautiful  fancy,  I  admit, 
87 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

but  still  fancy.  The  Cloud,  it  seems  to  me, 
will  prove  the  truth  of  this  remark.  Arethusa 
may  also  be  cited  in  support  of  it.  It  is  trite 
to  say,  however,  that  the  odes  To  the  Sky- 
lark and  The  West  Wind  display  in  parts 
superb  imaginative  power.  The  closing  lines 
of  the  latter : 

"  O,  Wind, 
If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind  ?  " 

are  richly  imaginative;  the  stanza  of  the 
former  that  runs : 

"  What  thou  art  we  know  not ; 
What  is  most  like  thee  ? 
From  rainbow  clouds  there  flow  not 
Drops  so  bright  to  see 
As  from  thy  presence  showers  a  rain  of  melody," 

is  richly  fanciful.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  in 
nearly  all  these  poems,  there  is  an  undertone 
of  weakness,  of  despair. 

Passing  over  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant  with 
the  remark  that  it  is  easy  to  agree  with  Mr. 
Symonds  in  disparaging  the  mass  of  Shelley's 
political,  satirical,  and  avowedly  humorous 
poetry,  including  The  Masque  of  Anarchy, 
and  that  uncalled  for  metrical  fungus  Peter 
Bell,  the  Third,  we  come  to  the  famous 
Epipsychidion,  which  may  be  likened  to 
88 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

the  sacred  dimly-lighted  shrine,  in  which  the 
ritualistic  votary  of  the  high-Shelley-church 
party  worships  with  the  greatest  unction, 
leaving  the  profane  and  uninitiated  herd  of 
Shelleyans  to  carry  on  their  devotions  in  the 
more  spacious  and  lofty  cathedral  of  the 
Prometheus  Unbound.  I  have  already  re- 
ferred to  this  poem  as  occasioned  by  Shel- 
ley's sudden  and  soon  abandoned  passion 
for  Emilia  Viviani,  and  I  have  pointed  out 
the  painful  deficiencies  of  the  production 
from  the  point  of  view  of  morals.  I  fully 
agree  with  those  critics,  however,  who  see  in 
it  a  wonderful  intensity,  a  white  heat  of  pas- 
sion. But  I  have  seen  intense  heat  in  a  burn- 
ing pile  of  decayed  leaves,  and  I  am  not 
certain  that  the  heat  of  this  poem  does  not 
remind  me  more  of  burning  leaves  than  of 
an  ever  burning  sun.  Shakspere's  sonnets 
show  passion  at  its  intensity,  but  their  heat  is 
like  the  heat  of  a  burning  sun.  Yet  the 
description  of  the  isle  to  which  the  poet  urges 
his  new  found  love  to  fly  with  him  is,  if  un- 
earthly, nevertheless  the  most  wonderful 
thing  of  its  kind  that  one  need  ever  expect 
to  read  —  exquisite  fancy  and  a  perfect  sense 
for  melody  were  never  so  thoroughly  fused 
and  ignited  by  emotion  as  in  this  passage. 
As  for  Adonais,  who  would  touch  that 
89 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

most  melodious  of  elegies  with  a  rough  hand  ? 
Certainly  its  subject  matter  is  sound  even  if 
unsubstantiality  be  a  characteristic  of  its 
author's  treatment.  Certainly  it  has  the 
natural  magic  of  sound  to  perfection,  if  not 
that  of  language.  Certainly  it  will  live  to 
couple  together  forever  the  names  of  two 
noble  poets.  But  just  as  certainly  it  has  not 
the  sure,  the  inevitable  touch  of  the  master 
hand  upon  it,  the  touch  that  Milton's  hand 
gave  to  Lycidas.  Hellas,  too,  who  would 
wish  to  be  ruthless  with,  even  if  many  pro- 
fessed Shelleyans  do  speak  of  it  with  little 
rapture?  The  fragments  of  its  prologue  are 
wonderful  and  far  sounder,  far  saner,  far  more 
powerful,  and  therefore  nearer  to  the  sublime, 
than  anything  in  Prometheus  Unbound.  Of 
course,  we  all  know  that  Shelley's  energy 
gave  out  and  that  Hellas  remained  a  frag- 
ment —  a  noble  fragment,  however,  contain- 
ing the  most  satisfying  of  all  the  poet's 
numerous  choruses :  the  chorus  that  contains 
such  a  stanza  as  this :  — 

"  Another  Hellas  rears  its  mountains 
From  waves  serener  far ; 
A  new  Peneus  rolls  his  fountains 
Against  the  morning  star. 
Where  fairer  Tempes  bloom,  there  sleep 
Young  Cyclads  on  a  sunnier  deep." 
90 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

How  much  truer,  how  much  more  satisfying 
is  this  than  the  love-making  of  the  earth 
and  the  moon  in  the  vaunted  fourth  act  of 
Prometheus? 

Putting  aside  Julian  and  Maddalo,  a 
poem  of  the  Rosalind  and  Helen,  order, 
only  more  successful,  the  fragmentary  Prince 
Athanase,  the  impossible  but  superb  metrical 
freak  of  The  Witch  of  Atlas,  and  the 
charming  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne,  which 
shows  what  Shelley  with  his  delicate  fancy 
could  have  done  in  the  delightful  realm  of 
society  verse,  we  come  full  upon  the  mass  of 
fragments  and  short  lyrics  which  in  my  judg- 
ment represent  Shelley's  chief  contribution  to 
literature.  But  before  discussing  these,  I 
must  say  a  few  words  about  that  remarkable 
drama  The  Cenci. 

I  call  it  remarkable  because  it  is  perhaps, 
the  most  completely  objective  piece  of  work 
ever  done  by  a  subjective  poet.  Shelley  saw 
plainly  that  he  must  efface  himself,  if  he 
would  succeed  as  a  dramatist,  and  he  did  it 
most  effectually.  But  something  more  than 
the  effacement  of  one's  subjectivity  in  the 
construction  of  a  drama  is  necessary  to  its 
success.  Shelley  did  not  efface  himself  in  his 
choice  of  theme,  possibly  no  dramatist  can 
—  and  not  being  a  sound,  wholesome  charac- 
91 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

ter,  he  failed  to  choose  a  sound,  wholesome 
theme.  But  Ford  and  Webster  and  Massinger 
chose  unwholesome  themes  and  succeeded. 
This  was  because  they  were  greater  dramatists 
than  Shelley,  because  they  had  their  genius 
more  under  control,  because  they  knew  human 
nature  better.  Not  a  single  character  in 
Shelley's  play  is  a  real  human  being,  except 
Beatrice,  and  she  lacks  the  charm  which  a 
greater  artist  would  have  given  her,  in  order  to 
counteract  the  horror  with  which  her  environ- 
ment and  her  actions  invest  her.  Beatrice  is 
strong  and  noble,  but  she  is  hardly  flesh  and 
blood,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  Shelley  does 
not  cause  her  to  fall  in  our  esteem,  when  he 
allows  her  to  use  her  power  to  make  her  un- 
fortunate accomplice  eat  his  words  in  order 
that  she  may  preserve  the  honor  of  her  family. 
Remembering  the  poet's  description  or  repre- 
sentation of  that  family,  one  is  forced  to  ask 
how  any  honor  could  be  left  to  preserve.  I 
cannot  pursue  the  subject,  save  to  add  that 
in  only  one  or  two  passages,  especially  in  the 
closing  lines,  do  we  strike  a  note  of  true 
poetry,  or  even  of  true  music.  But  a  tragedy 
without  here  and  there  a  deep  poetical  note 
is  like  a  desert  without  an  oasis.  Imagine 
the  Duchess  of  Malfi  stripped  of  its  poetry ! 
This  fact  alone  makes  the  opinion  of  those 
92 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

critics  idle  who  claim  that  The  Cenci  is  the 
greatest  tragedy  since  Shakspere.  I  sup- 
pose they  mean  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  for  I 
can  hardly  imagine  a  discreet  person's  putting 
Shelley's  work  beside  that  of  Webster  or 
Ford.  But  even  if  they  mean  this,  they  over- 
shoot the  mark,  for  Otway  with  his  Venice 
Preserved,  and  his  Orphan  has  to  be  reck- 
oned with,  to  say  nothing  of  Dryden  and 
Byron. 

But  now  let  us  conclude  this  long,  this 
much  too  long  paper  with  a  few  words  about 
Shelley's  fragments  and  lyrics.  What  can 
English  poetry  show  to  equal  them  of  their 
kind?  and  what  is  their  kind?  I  answer 
simply  —  the  lyric  of  weakness,  of  longing, 
of  despair.  We  are  all  weak  at  times,  we  all 
have  longings,  we  all  despair,  and  so  it  is  that 
Shelley's  "  lyrical  cries  "  take  hold  upon  us, 
and  fascinate  us,  and  never  leave  us.  Let  us 
think  them  over  and  see  if  we  have  not  ana- 
lyzed truly  the  secret  of  their  fascination  — 
the  Invocation  to  Misery,  the  Woodman 
and  the  Nightingale,  The  Indian  Serenade, 
Love's  Philosophy,  I  fear  thy  kisses,  gen- 
tle maiden,  To  the  Moon,  Time  Long  Past, 
the  Dirge  for  the  Year,  To-night,  Time, 
Music,  when  soft  voices  die,  Rarely,  rarely 
comest  thou,  Mutability,  A  Lament,  Re- 
93 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

membrance,  One  word  is  too  often  pro- 
faned, Ginevra  (though  this  is  not  a  lyric), 
The  Recollection,  with  its 

"  Less  oft  is  peace  in  Shelley's  mind 
Than  calm  in  waters  seen," 

the  dirge  beginning  "  Rough  wind  that  mean- 
est loud" — why,  the  very  titles  almost  give 
one  the  "  blues,"  so  sad  they  are.  Yes,  here  I 
think  we  have  the  secret  of  Shelley's  power 
over  us  all ;  but,  as  I  remarked  before,  it  is 
a  misnomer  to  speak  of  power  in  this  passive 
sense.  Shelley  is  like  an  ^Eolian  harp  —  the 
winds  of  his  sad  fate  play  upon  him  and  im- 
mortal, weird,  sad,  and  haunting  melodies 
float  away  to  us  and  enter  our  souls  and 
abide  there.  And  we  love  the  harp  —  and 
some  unthinkingly  worship  it,  and  who  shall 
blame  them? 

It  is  true  that  among  these  fragments  and 
poems  many  pieces  can  be  found  that  show 
real  power  —  many  that  have  not  a  trace  of 
weakness  or  sadness ;  and  it  is  instructive  to 
note  that  these  pieces  were  mainly  composed 
during  the  happy  years  in  Italy  when  Shelley's 
powers  were  rapidly  maturing.  Had  he  been 
spared,  there  is  no  telling  what  he  might 
not  have  done.  I  have  already  referred  to 
the  power  displayed  in  the  Prologue  to  Hel- 
las, and  although  I  cannot  praise  the  Tri- 
94 


APROPOS   OF   SHELLEY 

umph  of  Life,  as  Shelleyans  are  wont  to  do, 
I  am  by  no  means  blind  to  the  power  of  that 
The  Ode  to  Naples  is  to  my  mind  a  much 
more  magnificent  poem.  One  can  hardly 
praise  it  too  highly.  And  where  is  the 
beauty  of  joy  more  fully  set  forth  than  in 
the  famous  bridal  song  beginning  — 

"  The  golden  gates  of  sleep  unbar." 

But  words  are  weak  and  ineffectual  when  we 
deal  with  such  fragile  and  delicate  things; 
all  one  can  do  is  to  quote  them,  yet  I  have 
no  space  for  that  and  they  are  too  well- 
known.  I  will  merely  quote  two  stanzas  of 
a  not  very  familiar  poem,  as  worth  in  my 
opinion,  on  account  of  their  true  ring,  all 
the  hazy  paintings  of  sunsets  and  clouds  that 
Shelley  ever  gave  us.  They  occur  in  the 
poem  addressed  to  Mary  Wollstonecraft 
Godwin : 

"  Upon  my  heart  thy  accents  sweet 
Of  peace  and  pity  fell  like  dew 
On  flowers  half  dead  ;  thy  lips  did  meet 
Mine  tremblingly ;  thy  dark  eyes  threw 
Their  soft  persuasion  on  my  brain, 
Charming  away  its  dream  of  pain. 

"  We  are  not  happy,  sweet !  our  state 
Is  strange  and  full  of  doubt  and  fear; 
More  need  of  words  that  ills  abate  — 

95 


APROPOS  OF   SHELLEY 

Reserve  or  censure  come  not  near 
Our  sacred  friendship,  lest  there  be 
No  solace  left  for  thee  or  me." 

Here,  I  venture  to  think,  there  is  a  wholesome 
subject-matter,  and  a  natural  magic  both  of 
sound  and  of  language.  For  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, though  right  in  the  main  in  the  criti- 
cisms he  passed  upon  Shelley,  might,  one 
would  think,  have  somewhat  modified  his 
famous  formula.  Shelley  is  by  no  means 
"  ineffectual,"  although  his  elaborate  work 
probably  is  in  part.  He  is  not  a  poet  of  sov- 
ereign and  sustained  endeavor  like  Milton 
and  Spenser,  he  has  not  the  moral  profundity 
of  Wordsworth,  he  has  not  the  sure  touch, 
the  exquisite  art  of  Keats,  or  the  passion  and 
the  mastery  of  Byron,  but  he  is  the  most 
musical,  the  most  sympathetic,  the  most 
aspiring  spirit  that  ever  succeeded  in  sav- 
ing itself  by  means  of  its  sylph-like  wings 
from  the  ever  greedy  and  onward  rolling 
waves  of  the  oblivious  ocean. 


96 


Ill 

LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 


97 


Ill 

LITERATURE   AND    MORALS 


'  So  much  use  has  been  made  in  recent  years 
of  the  formula  "  Art  for  art's  sake "  that 
it  seems  almost  an  impertinence  to  drag 
it  forward  again  for  purposes  of  discussion. 
Yet  the  relations  of  literature  to  morals  form 
a  theme  of  such  perennial  and  transcendent 
interest  that  nearly  any  critic  is  warranted  in 
making  them  a  basis  for  his  lucubrations, 
and  whenever  these  relations  are  in  question, 
the  convenient  but  often  misapplied  formula 
simply  has  to  be  reckoned  with,  since  all 
literature  that  is  worth  considering  is  plainly 
the  product  of  a  specific  art. 

In  its  most  commonplace  application  the 
formula  means  merely  that  art  does  not  exist 
primarily  for  purposes  of  preaching  or  teach- 
ing— which  is  a  contention  that  will  displease 
no  one  who  has  the  slightest  idea  of  what  art 
is  or  rather  what  it  does.  The  primary  object 
of  every  art  is  to  appeal  pleasurably  to  the 
emotions  which  we  denominate  aesthetic,  that 
is  those  that  affect  chiefly  the  eye  and  the  ear 
99 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

—  and  as  neither  preaching  nor  teaching  has 
such  an  appeal  in  view,  except  indirectly  as 
a  means  to  an  end,  it  follows  that  art  cannot 
be  true  to  itself  if  it  preaches  or  teaches  of 
set  purpose.  Pure  art,  in  other  words,  exists 
only  for  purposes  of  aesthetic  gratification, 
and  whenever  any  artistic  product  gives  us 
gratification  of  another  sort,  it  is  either  be- 
cause the  emotions  of  the  artist  were  not 
purely  aesthetic  or  because  we  find  it  impos- 
sible to  put  ourselves  in  a  condition  of  recep- 
tivity in  which  our  aesthetic  sensibilities  are 
alone  brought  into  play. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  that  there 
never  has  been  in  all  probability  a  perfectly 
pure  artistic  product  or  a  man  or  woman 
capable  of  receiving  perfectly  pure  aesthetic 
pleasure.  Our  emotions,  whether  we  act  as 
creators  or  recipients  of  such  pleasure,  are  too 
mixed  for  such  a  consummation.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  remark,  however,  that  it  by  no  means 
holds  that  pure  art  is  per  se  nobler  and  of 
greater  value  to  the  race  than  mixed  art, 
that  is,  art  that  appeals  to  mixed  emotions. 
There  are  other  emotions  besides  the  strictly 
aesthetic,  to  wit  the  intellectual  and  moral, 
and  the  latter,  which  we  may  for  convenience 
assume  to  include  the  spiritual,  have  long 
seemed  to  most  men  to  be  the  noblest 
100 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

emotions  humanity  is  capable  of  feeling.  A 
work  of  art,  while  appealing  primarily  to  the 
aesthetic  emotions  and  taking  its  artistic  as 
differentiated  from  its  other  characteristics 
from  the  fact  that  it  makes  this  appeal,  may, 
in  its  inevitable  appeal  to  other  emotions,  so 
pleasurably  affect  our  highest  spiritual  nature 
as  to  gain  immensely  in  nobility  through  the 
very  fact  that  it  rs  not  a  pure  artistic  product 
but  a  mixed  one.  Examples  are  not  want- 
ing to  illustrate  the  truth  of  this  contention. 
The  Mona  Lisa  undoubtedly  gives  its  beholder 
supreme  aesthetic  pleasure,  but  it  would  not 
be  so  great  a  picture  as  it  is  if  it  did  not  give 
him  also  the  spiritual  pleasure  of  seeking  to 
establish  relations  of  sympathy  and  amity 
between  his  own  soul  and  that  which  lurks 
inscrutable  in  the  depths  of  those  disillusioned 
but  divinely  benignant  eyes.  In  literature 
Poe's  Ulalume  gives  us,  perhaps,  an  ex- 
ample of  the  ne plus  ultra  of  purely  aesthetic 
appeal  to  ear  and  eye  through  its  wonderful 
rhythm  and  its  supernatural  shadowing,  but 
what  sane  critic  would  contend  that  Poe's 
weird  poem  is  nobler  than  the  less  purely 
aesthetic  Elegy  Written  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard in  which  Gray  succeeded  in  stirring  the 
moral  emotions  of  humanity  to  a  degree 
rarely  surpassed  ? 

ior 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

It  is  just  here  that  we  can  put  our  finger  on 
the  most  dangerous  use  that  has  yet  been 
made  of  the  formula  "  Art  for  art's  sake." 
Critics  and  artists  by  the  score  have  assumed 
that  pure  art  is  necessarily  more  to  be  desid- 
erated than  mixed  art,  and  have  of  late  tended 
steadily  not  merely  to  stress  technique  in  the 
interests  of  what  we  may  call  art-isolation, 
but  to  be  suspicious  of  the  criticism  which 
concerns  itself  at  all  with  the  moral  and  in- 
tellectual aspects  of  art,  and  even  to  eschew 
subjects  that  might  strongly  suggest  such 
criticism.  Some  of  them  go  farther  yet  and 
maintain  that  as  art  exists  primarily  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  aesthetic  pleasure,  the 
artist  should  not  be  hampered  in  his  choice 
of  subject  by  any  other  than  aesthetic  con- 
siderations. As  we  have  just  seen,  it  is,  to 
begin  with,  an  absurd  hypothesis  to  suppose 
that  any  subject  can  be  chosen  that  will  make 
a  purely  aesthetic  appeal;  and  even  if  this 
were  the  case,  it  would  not  follow  that  an 
artist  would  be  justified  in  throwing  to  the 
winds  the  advantages  gained  by  choice  of  a 
subject  furnishing  high  moral  and  aesthetic 
pleasure  at  one  and  the  same  time.  We  may 
readily  grant  that  in  choosing  his  subject  the 
artist  usually  and  rightly  bases  his  choice 
upon  aesthetic  considerations  and  that  in  a 
1 02 


LITERATURE   AND    MORALS 

majority  of  cases  his  selection  is  spontaneous 
rather  than  determined  upon  principle,  but  it 
rarely  happens  that  after  he  has  begun  his 
work  he  remains  totally  unconscious  of  the 
moral  bearings  of  his  subject,  and  there  are 
surely  some  subjects  that  involve  important 
moral  considerations  the  moment  they  sug- 
gest themselves  to  the  mind.  The  painter 
who  chooses  to  paint  a  repulsive  woman  in  a 
repulsive  attitude  cannot  claim  the  right  to 
retort  "  honi  soit  qui  mal  y  pense "  to  his 
censorious  critics.  We  should  make  all  due 
allowance  for  the  unconscious  element  in  art, 
but  if  we  once  admit  that  it  is  our  duty  —  as 
it  surely  is  —  to  order  all  our  actions  upon 
the  highest  plane  possible  to  us,  it  follows 
that  the  artist  who  aims  for  purely  aesthetic 
effects  is,  if  conscious,  guilty  of  a  moral  lapse, 
and,  if  unconscious,  guilty  of  a  grave  error, 
whenever  it  can  be  shown  that  his  work  would 
possess  higher  value  for  the  race  were  its 
subjects  so  chosen  as  to  appeal  also  to  our 
moral  and  intellectual  emotions.  We  cannot 
therefore  accept  that  extension  of  the  famous 
formula  which  leads  people  to  hold  that  the 
moralist  and  the  thinker  are  guilty  of  imper- 
tinence when  they  ask  to  be  represented  on 
every  jury  of  artistic  awards.  To  pursue  an 
art  primarily  for  the  purpose  of  preaching 
103 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

through  the  medium  of  communication  it 
offers  between  soul  and  soul,  is  to  degrade 
two  noble  functions  of  human  genius;  but  to 
pursue  an  art  in  total  oblivion  of  its  relations 
with  thought  and  morals  is  always  to  hamper 
and  often  to  degrade  art  alone,  since  thought 
and  morals  will  under  all  circumstances  retain 
their  dignity.  Positing  then  as  the  basis  of 
our  reasoning  the  contention  that  the  formula 
"  Art  for  art's  sake."  does  not;  when  properly 
interpreted,  make  for  art- isolation,  and  con- 
fining ourselves  hereafter  in  the  main  to  a 
consideration  of  literary  art  proper,  let  us  see 
what  light  can  be  thrown  upon  the  relations 
borne  by  literature  to  morals  by  treating  the 
subject  from  the  threefold  point  of  view  of  the 
relations  to  morals  sustained  by  the  writer, 
the  reader,  and  the  written  work. 


THE  primary  object  of  the  literary  artist  is 
to  give  expression  to  his  aesthetic  emotions  in 
such  a  way  as  to  communicate  them  to  others, 
but  if,  as  we  have  just  seen,  the  literary  pro- 
duct is  sure  to  cause  other  emotions  as  well, 
and  if  most  people  read  more  or  less  pas- 
sively, we  must  conclude  that,  in  the  majority 
104 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

of  cases  at  least,  these  other  emotions  were 
consciously  or  unconsciously  imparted  to  the 
literary  product  by  the  artist.1  In  some  cases, 
however,  it  is  obvious  that  the  intellectual 
and  moral  emotions  caused  in  us  by  the 
perusal  of  a  piece  of  literature  are  mainly 
due  to  the  fact  that  there  are  secret  connec- 
tions between  the  centres  of  such  emotional 
forces  and  the  aesthetic  emotions  created  by 
the  literary  product.  Over  these  secret  con- 
nections the  writer  has  plainly  no  control,  for 
he  cannot  gauge  the  emotional  capacity  of 
each  several  reader;  he  is  therefore  respon- 
sible -only  for  such  intellectual  and  moral 
stimulation  as  he  experiences  himself  when 
engaged  in  creating  his  literary  product,  and 
this  responsibility  can  be  measured  only  on 
the  assumption  that  there  is  an  emotional 
standard  fitting  the  normal  man.  It  is  a 
commonplace  of  criticism  that  the  richer  a 
writer's  emotional  nature  is  the  more  emo- 
tively effective  his  work  will  be,  hence  it  fol- 
lows that  if  it  be  our  duty  to  make  the  most 
of  our  talents,  it  is  incumbent  upon  every 
literary  man  to  develop  his  moral  and  intel- 
lectual nature  to  the  utmost  in  order  to  make 
himself  an  ideal  artist  and  thus  a  supreme 
power  for  good,  provided  always  that  he  pre- 
1  See /<?.#,  Essay  II.,  p.  156,  note. 
105 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

serves  his  artistic  poise.  From  this  point  of 
view  at  least  the  relations  of  the  writer,  as  of 
every  other  creative  artist,  to  morals,  are  as 
clear  as  they  are  difficult  to  sustain  in  a 
proper  manner,  but  they  are  also,  as  we  easily 
perceive,  the  same  that  every  conscientious 
man  sustains,  merely  as  man. 

It  would  seem  that  we  have  arrived  at  the 
conclusion  that  a  great  writer  must  be  a  very 
good  man,  but  fortunately  or  unfortunately — 
we  need  not  stop  to  determine  which  —  such 
a  conclusion  is  not  warranted  either  by  our 
process  of  reasoning  or  by  a  careful  study  of 
literary  history.  Lord  Byron,  to  take  only 
one  instance,  was  not  an  exemplary  man,  but 
even  his  most  aggressive  modern  detractors 
are  hardly  inept  enough  to  deny  that  he  was 
a  great  writer,  although  they  come  as  near  as 
they  can  to  doing  it.  The  cant  which  seems 
to  be  an  essential  component  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  nature,  makes  many  of  us  anxious  to 
establish  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  be- 
tween personal  goodness  and  literary  great- 
ness, but  although  noble  names  like  those  of 
Scott  and  Longfellow  help  us,  such  names  as 
those  of  Swift  and  Poe  prove  awkward  stum- 
bling-blocks. We  have  simply  omitted  to 
consider  the  fact  that  goodness  has  little 
meaning  when  used  of  a  person  unless  it 
106 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

refers  to  conduct,  whereas  emotions,  which 
are  essential  to  artistic  creation,  need  not 
translate  themselves  into  conduct  at  all.  It 
may  indeed  be  held  that  really  noble  liter- 
ary work  cannot  be  done  by  a  man  incapable 
of  noble  conduct,  but  the  noble  writer  need 
not  be  an  actually  noble  man.  His  emotions 
may  exhaust  themselves  in  his  artistic  crea- 
tions, and  his  conduct  may  be  ignoble  in  the 
extreme.  Then  again  so  great  is  the  force  of 
artistic  sympathy  that  it  might  be  possible 
for  a  writer  of  objective  literature  to  simulate 
or  actually  feel  for  the  time  being  noble  emo- 
tions he  had  observed  in  others  but  never 
felt  in  his  proper  person,  just  as  it  was  possi- 
ble for  Shakspere,  reversing  the  process,  to 
give  us  lago  and  Richard  III. 

There  is  a  further  fact  that  we  neglect  to 
consider  when  we  try  to  establish  the  conten- 
tion that  the  truly  great  writer  must  be  a 
really  good  man.  This  is  the  fact  that  the 
intellectual  qualities  of  literature  while  not 
vastly  important  in  determining  its  value  can 
by  no  means  be  overlooked.  These  are  the 
qualities,  rather  than  moral  and  aesthetic 
ones,  that  make  writers  like  Swift  and  Pope 
such  great  literary  figures.  It  is  needless, 
however,  to  remark  that  intellect  and  good 
conduct  are  not  causally  related. 
107 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

But  while  we  are  estopped  from  believing 
that  the  literary  artist  must  be  a  good  man 
in  order  to  win  genuine  success,  it  remains 
perfectly  true  to  maintain  that  every  moral 
and  spiritual  advance  made  by  a  writer  in  his 
conduct  ought  to  increase  the  richness  of  his 
emotional  life  and  thus  to  make  him  a  nobler 
literary  artist,  provided  always  that  his  artistic 
impulse  is  strong  enough  to  resist  the  an- 
tagonistic desire  to  give  himself  up  to  a  life 
of  spiritual  contemplation  or  activity.  The 
poetry  of  Tennyson  and  Browning  is  all  the 
greater  for  their  spiritual  experiences;  but 
that  of  the  latter  gains  over  that  of  the  former 
for  the  reason  that  Browning's  nature  did  not 
become  so  unbalanced  as  Tennyson's  and 
never  led  him  to  withdraw  from  society  and 
thus  to  deprive  his  poetry  of  that  element  of 
adaptation  to  the  psychical  needs  of  strug- 
gling humanity  that  does  not  always  emerge 
from  the  polished  verses  of  his  more  popular 
contemporary.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that 
Byron's  work  need  not  have  lost  in  energy, 
which  is  its  most  vital  characteristic,  and  that 
it  would  have  been  far  richer,  had  his  spiritual 
life  been  led  on  a  higher  plane — on  the 
plane,  for  example,  to  which  his  enthusiasm 
for  the  cause  of  Greek  freedom  was  conduct- 
ing him  when  the  fatal  fever  cut  short  the 
jo8 


LITERATURE   AND    MORALS 

most  fascinatingly  brilliant  career  that  any 
Englishman  has  had,  perhaps,  since  the  days 
of  Drake  and  Raleigh.  On  the  other  hand 
the  Middle  Ages  furnish  us  the  example  of  a 
period  when  spiritual  forces  were  too  strong 
to  allow  many  men  to  attain  the  artistic  poise 
necessary  to  effective  creative  work ;  and  the 
pathetic  career  of  the  Irish  novelist  Gerald 
Griffin  who  gave  up  the  chance  of  becom- 
ing an  Irish  Sir  Walter  —  in  order  to  do  the 
silent  work  of  a  pious  priest,  as  Mr.  Aubrey 
de  Vere  has  touchingly  reminded  us  in 
his  late  volume  of  Recollections,  serves  to 
indicate  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  art  at 
least  a  man's  spiritual  emotions  and  aspira- 
tions may  be  too  intense. 

The  artist  who  is  lost  to  the  world  because 
he  has  devoted  himself  to  the  work  of  priest 
or  philanthropist  can  cause  us  only  a  partial 
regret  which  may  be  richly  atoned  for ;  but 
what  are  we  to  say  of  the  artist  who  instead 
of  rising  above  the  spiritual  level  consistent 
with  artistic  poise  falls  below  that  required 
of  all  intelligent  men?  There  surely  is  a 
spiritual  level  which  the  average  man  of 
thought  and  action  is  expected  to  keep  under 
penalty  of  being  censured  by  his  fellows  if  he 
fall  below  it ;  yet  we  are  gravely  told  that  a 
painter  may  paint  and  an  author  write  regard- 
109 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

less  of  the  consequences  that  may  flow  from 
his  work,  provided  only  that  he  satisfy  the 
aesthetic  demands  of  himself  and  a  coterie  of 
connoisseurs.  A  man,  so  we  are  told,  may 
write  a  story  that  is  not  merely  unspiritual 
but  positively  antagonistic  to  all  that  is 
regarded  by  normal  men  as  spiritual,  without 
rendering  himself  liable  to  reproach  provided 
his  style  be  exquisite,  his  powers  of  char- 
acterization good  and  his  narrative  faculty 
above  reproach.  All  life  is  his  province,  and 
as  the  lascivious,  the  base,  the  brutal  are 
elements  of  life,  he  is  at  liberty  to  make  such 
use  of  them  in  his  work  as  may  please  his 
artistic  self.  Now  surely  this  is  a  bold  de- 
mand to  make  —  one  that  would  not  be  made 
for  any  other  class  of  mortals.  We  even 
demand  of  the  successful  general  in  time  of 
war  that  he  shall  repress  brutality  among  his 
soldiers ;  but  we  encourage  some  novelists  to 
glorify  brutality  and  vulgarity  whenever  we 
hasten  to  buy  their  books.  We  stand  aghast 
at  the  proposition  that  all  life  is  the  artist's 
province  because  we  do  not  see  at  once 
where  a  line  can  well  be  drawn,  and  are  yet 
certain  that  unless  the  proposition  be  quali- 
fied, the  highest  and  purest  features  of  our 
civilization  may  be  endangered  by  the  va- 
garies of  irresponsible  men  of  genius.  But  if 
HO 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

we  will  only  view  the  matter  calmly,  we  shall 
perhaps  find  a  way  out  of  our  dilemma  with- 
out being  compelled  to  deny  that  life  is 
indeed  the  province  of  the  artist  in  general 
and  of  the  writer  in  particular. 

Our  loophole  of  escape  is  a  very  simple 
one,  so  simple  indeed  that  we  continually  fail 
to  find  it  —  so  simple  too  that  we  have  a 
right  to  blame  the  artist  who  does  not  make 
it  plain  to  us.  All  life  is  the  artist's  province, 
but  what  gives  life  represented  in  art  its 
value  to  the  artist  and  to  ourselves  is  what  we 
may  term  its  emotional  content.  The  artist 
observes  some  phase  of  life  emotionally  and 
consciously  or  unconsciously  transmits  his 
emotions  to  us  along  with  a  representation  of 
whatever  caused  them.  If  his  emotions  are 
pure,  we  shall  be  profited,  under  normal  cir- 
cumstances, by  being  allowed  to  share  them. 
We  have  a  right  to  demand  that  all  emotional 
appeals  made  to  us  shall  be  pure  and  pleas- 
urable, and  we  may  make  this  demand  of  the 
writer  or  plastic  artist  just  as  legitimately  as 
we  may  of  our  friends  and  acquaintances  who 
indeed  are  sometimes  obliged  on  account  of 
the  exigencies  of  life  to  make  demands  upon 
our  sympathy  that  cannot  be  pleasurable  to 
finite  beings.  Furthermore  it  is  the  duty  of 
every  man  to  obtain  as  pure,  pleasurable, 
ill 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

even  spiritual  emotion  as  he  may  from  his 
daily  life  and  experience,  and  this  duty  is 
especially  incumbent  upon  the  artist  on 
account  of  his  high  endowment.  It  is  his 
duty  to  look  upon  life  with  pure,  spiritual 
eyes,  as  it  were,  and  if  he  does  this,,  his  emo- 
tions connected  with  any  manifestation  of  life 
will  be  pure  and  spiritual  and  will  not  lose 
this  character  when  after  having  been  em- 
bodied in  a  specific  work  of  art  they  are 
transmitted  to  us  who  are  brought  into  subtle 
relations  with  the  latter.  Hence  we  conclude 
that  the  artist  may  indeed  take  all  life  for  his 
province  but  that  he  must  also  see  to  it  that 
he  represents  artistically  no  phase  of  life  that 
does  not  give  him  pure  emotions  which  he 
may  transmit  to  us.  But  when  we  feel  re- 
pelled by  his  treatment  of  a  special  phase  of 
life,  what  is  it  but  a  proof  that,  from  our  point 
of  view  at  least,  his  emotions  were  not  pure 
and  high  and  that  he  himself  was  consciously 
or  unconsciously  below  a  proper  spiritual 
level  when  he  was  engaged  in  the  inception 
and  completion  of  his  artistic  product.  And 
when  a  sufficient  number  of  cultured  men  feel 
thus  with  regard  to  the  work  of  any  writer, 
painter,  sculptor,  or  musician,  who  shall  deny 
that  they  have  as  much  right  to  consider 
such  an  artist  as  morally  delinquent  as  they 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

have  to  judge  any  individual  of  their  acquaint- 
ance whose  conduct  has  shown  that  he  has 
not  maintained  himself  at  the  spiritual  level 
properly  to  be  demanded  of  him?  We  can- 
not indeed  draw  any  hard  and  fast  lines  in 
such  matters,  but  society  would  be  in  a  bad 
way  if  no  man  could  be  judged  save  by  hard 
and  fast  rules,  that  is  by  positive  law  civil  or 
canonical. 

We  are  thus  led  to  conclude  that  just  as 
the  artist  as  artist  must  not  rise  above  such  a 
spiritual  level  as  will  be  consistent  with  his 
continuing  to  make  art  his  life  work,  so  he 
should  not  fall  below  such  a  spiritual  level  as 
will  fit  him  to  be  a  proper  companion  for  true 
and  good  men  in  all  lands  and  in  all  ages. 
Perhaps  we  may  express,  these  truths  epi- 
grammatically  by  saying  that  the  modern 
artist  ought  never  to  be  an  ascetic  recluse, 
and  ought  always  to  be  a  thorough  gentle- 
man. We  make  no  greater  moral  demands 
upon  him  than  we  do  upon  other  men,  save 
in  so  far  as  his  endowment  makes  him  more 
responsible  to  his  own  conscience  and  to 
society ;  but  we  certainly  shall  not,  if  we  are 
wise,  give  him  more  license  in.  matters  moral 
and  spiritual  than  we  give  other  men.  It  is 
the  constant  fault  of  those  who  preach  art- 
isolation  that  they  demand  license  rather 
8 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

than  liberty  for  the  artist;  but  the  great 
public  has  never  really  given  in  to  their  con- 
tentions, and  the  great  public  is  right. 

I  am  aware  that  this  may  sound  very  phil- 
istine ;  but  I  am  quite  ready  to  take  the  con- 
sequences. I  cannot  see  how  the  man  of 
genius  can  claim  extraordinary  privileges ;  I 
see  only  that  he  labors  under  extraordinary 
responsibilities  and  that  more  rather  than  less 
in  moral  and  spiritual  matters  should  be 
demanded  of  him.  This  phase  of  our  dis- 
cussion cannot,  however,  be  regarded  as 
closed  until  we  have  considered  the  moral 
responsibilities  of  the  reader  or  recipient  of 
artistic  pleasure;  for  if  we  may  make  de- 
mands upon  the  artist,  he  may  surely  make 
reciprocal  demands  on  us.  But  it  is  only 
when  we  fail  in  our  duties  toward  the  artist 
that  the  charge  of  philistinism  properly  lies 
at  our  doors,  hence  my  nonchalance  with 
regard  to  the  possibility  of  lodging  such  a 
charge  successfully  against  what  I  have  just 
been  saying.  It  is  no  failure  in  duty  toward 
the  writer  or  painter  to  insist  that  each  shall 
be  a  gentleman  in  his  emotions ;  it  would 
rather  be  a  failure  in  duty  toward  each  not 
so  to  insist. 

But  while  it  is  easy  to  scout  the  imputation 
of  philistinism,  it  is  unsafe  to  incur  the  charge 
114 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

of  obscurity,  and  it  may  therefore  be  well  to 
illustrate  the  train  of  thought  we  have  been 
pursuing.  Two  fruitful  sources  of  dissension 
between  the  public  and  the  world  of  artists 
and  critics  have  been  the  representation  of 
the  nude  in  plastic  art  and  the  treatment  of 
the  problem  of  sex  in  fiction.  There  has  been 
a  great  amount  of  philistinism  displayed  on 
the  public  side,  much  of  it  in  America,  as  the 
fantastic  sallies  of  Mr.  Anthony  Comstock 
and  the  prudish  mincings  of  certain  gentle- 
men of  Boston  plainly  show ;  but  this  we 
shall  discuss  later.  There  has  also  been  much 
bravado  displayed  by  the  authors  and  critics, 
and  both  parties  to  the  controversy  have  in 
consequence  frequently  lost  their  tempers. 
But  surely  the  problem  is  not  so  difficult  as 
it  has  generally  been  considered,  if  we  view 
it  in  the  light  of  what  may  be  called  the 
theory  of  the  emotional  basis  of  art.  A  nude 
picture  which  a  true  artist  is  impelled  to  paint 
because  of  the  pure  aesthetic,  intellectual 
and  moral  emotions  that  come  to  him  when 
he  contemplates  the  divine  beauty  of  the 
human  form  cannot  possibly  cause  other  than 
pure,  wholesome  emotions  in  any  normal 
person.  When  it  does,  the  spectator  who  is 
offended  is  simply  giving  play  to  his  idio- 
syncrasies, and  in  this  connection  it  may  be 
115 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

proper  to  remark  that  a  whole  people  may 
become  more  or  less  idiosyncratic  when  a  one- 
sided movement,  intellectual  and  spiritual, 
like  puritanism,  dominates  it  for  along  period 
of  time.  The  English-speaking  peoples  are 
all  more  or  less  idiosyncratic  with  regard  to 
this  matter  of  the  nude  hi  art,  and  whenever 
any  one  among  us  is  displeased  by  all  or 
nearly  all  representations  of  the  nude,  it  is  a 
sure  sign  that  such  a  person  is  of  a  nature  far 
too  warped  for  him  fairly  to  claim  to  be  con- 
sidered as  forming  part  of  the  public  that  has 
the  right  to  judge  an  artist. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  indisputable  that 
there  are  many  representations  of  the  nude 
which  satisfy  critics  from  the  point  of  view  of 
technique  but  are  felt  to  be  repulsive  by 
persons  who  have  no  bias  against  the  nude  in 
art.  What  does  this  mean  if  not  that  the 
artist  while  revelling  in  true  aesthetic  emotions 
during  the  creation  of  his  work,  was  also 
dominated  more  or  less  by  emotions  the 
reverse  of  moral  or  spiritual  —  emotions 
which  were  transferred  to  canvas  or  marble 
and  thence  to  the  spectator  with  the  result  of 
disturbing  the  latter's  spiritual  balance  and 
causing  him  disquietude  in  proportion  to  his 
purity  of  soul?  It  is  no  escape  from  this 
conclusion  to  point  to  the  art  devotees  who 
rr6 


LITERATURE  AND    MORALS 

profess  to  enjoy  the  picture  or  statue  free 
from  disturbing  qualms.  These  people  render 
themselves  unfit  judges  through  the  very  fact 
that  in  posing  as  judges  they  have  tended  to 
stress  one  set  of  emotions,  the  purely  aesthetic, 
as  those  which  alone  are  to  be  taken  into  ac- 
count by  critics  of  the  plastic  arts.  Having  wil- 
fully blinded  themselves  to  the  intellectual  and 
moral  aspects  of  art,  they  quite  naturally  go 
into  ecstasies  over  the  most  ambitious  picture 
in  the  new  portion  of  the  Luxembourg,  and  fail 
to  understand  how  a  spectator  who  has  stood 
in  adoration  before  Titian's  glorious  recum- 
bent Venuses  in  the  Tribune  of  the  Uffizi 
should  feel  uncomfortable  in  the  presence 
of  the  powerful  but  coarse  canvas  of  the 
Frenchman.  This  phenomenon  of  criticism 
is  of  too  frequent  occurrence  to  be  dismissed 
with  a  trite  "  honi  soit "  or  a  commonplace 
about  the  necessity  for  technical  training,  or 
a  shrug  of  the  critical  shoulders ;  it  does  not 
admit  of  being  explained  by  the  imputation 
of  philistinism  or  of  being  passed  lightly  over 
with  a  careless  "  de  gustibus  non  est  dispu- 
tandum."  It  is  an  important  phenomenon 
that  challenges  attention  and  that  is  plainly 
explicable  in  the  light  of  the  theory  of  the 
emotional  basis  of  all  art. 

The  same  reasoning  holds  with  regard  to 
117 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

the  treatment  of  the  problem  of  sex.  The 
novelist  has  a  clear  right  to  use  this  as  an 
element  of  his  story,  provided  only  that  he 
treat  it  as  a  gentleman  should.  The  idea 
that  the  novel  must  be  made  suitable  to  a 
school-girl  is  too  ludicrous  to  warrant  dis- 
cussion, but  the  idea  that  the  novel  must 
answer  the  requirements  of  pure-minded  men 
and  women  is  one  that  should  be  present  to 
every  writer  of  fiction.  It  will  not  do  for  one 
instant  to  say  that  a  novelist  may  be  so 
interested  in  his  characters  and  situations  that 
he  may  depict  them  in  any  way  that  does  not 
violate  the  canons  of  artistic  probability.  It 
is  incumbent  upon  him  to  view  life  as  a  pure- 
minded,  clean-hearted  man  of  genius.  This 
point  of  view  attained,  his  emotions  will  in- 
evitably be  fit  for  translation  into  an  artistic 
product  that  will  offend  no  normal  reader 
whose  idiosyncrasies  are  held  under  control. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  in  respect  of 
idiosyncrasies  we  English-speaking  peoples 
are  less  fortunate  than  the  French.  We  could 
produce  a  Scott,  —  but  it  will  be  many  a  long 
year  before  we  have  our  Balzac.  On  the 
other  hand  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  French 
have  been  too  lax  in  the  control  they  have  put 
upon  their  novelists. 

They  have  not  demanded  pure  emotions 
118 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

and  pure  work  from  their  writers  of  fiction, 
and  thus  have  rarely  obtained  the  latter  except 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  Balzac,  the  noble 
character  of  the  novelist  was  the  safeguard  of 
his  literary  creations.  We  may  leave  this 
phase  of  the  subject  with  the  remark  that 
Mr.  Hardy's  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  is 
an  excellent  novel  to  be  used  as  a  test  of  the 
truth  of  our  contentions.  This  great  book 
was  subjected  to  a  hue  and  cry  on  the  part  of 
squeamish  readers  both  in  this  country  and 
in  England,  but  it  arrested  and  held  the 
attention  of  the  judicious  through  the  fact 
that  the  novelist's  emotions  were  strong  and 
pure  whatever  one  may  say  of  the  strictly 
intellectual  appeal  of  his  strenuous  story,  or 
of  its  utilitarian  value  as  a  plea. 

It  now  remains  to  make  one  important 
qualification  with  reference  to  all  that  has 
been  said  —  a  qualification  that  will  lead  us 
easily  to  the  next  stage  of  our  discussion, 
the  relations  to  morals  sustained  by  the 
reader. 

The  terms  "  moral  "  and  "  spiritual "  as  we 
have  continually  applied  them,  must  be  taken 
in  their  most  general  sense  if  they  are  to  have 
any  meaning  or  value.  To  say  that  a  writer 
must  be  capable  of  spiritual  emotions  is  not 
to  say  that  these  emotions  can  be  labelled 
119 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

specifically  as  Christian,  or  Mohammedan,  or 
Buddhist  They  will  be  emotions  that  enter 
into  the  warp  and  woof  of  every  religious  life, 
but  they  will  be  emotions  that  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  and  Epictetus  felt  just  as  truly  and  per- 
haps as  profoundly  as  St.  Augustine  and  St. 
Bernard.  The  reason  for  this  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  of  the  essence  of  art  that  it 
should  aim  at  a  universal  appeal,  and  it  is 
enabled  to  make  this  appeal  only  through  the 
fact  that  it  interprets  universal  life  in  connec- 
tion with  universal  emotions  —  that  is,  with 
emotions  shared  by  all  normal  men.  It 
would  be  as  much  a  profanation  for  the 
artist,  who  is  the  apostle  of  beauty,  con- 
sciously to  limit  his  appeal,  as  it  would  be 
for  the  scientist,  who  is  the  apostle  of  truth, 
or  for  the  priest,  who  is  the  apostle  of  right- 
eousness. It  goes  without  saying  that  as  we 
have  produced,  in  letters  at  least,  only  two 
universal  artists,  Homer  and  Shakspere,  artists 
as  a  class  have  not  been  any  more  faithful  to 
their  ideals  than  have  the  various  peoples  to 
whom  they  have  appealed,  and  that  it  is 
therefore  admissible  to  speak  of  pagan  and 
Christian  art  and  to  discuss  the  spiritual 
qualities  of  the  work  of  the  respective  classes 
of  artists  in  terms  of  the  specific  religion  that 
dominated  them.  It  goes  without  saying  too 
120 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

that  the  more  completely  the  world  accepts 
Christian  teachings  in  one  form  or  another  the 
more  completely  will  the  terms  "  moral "  and 
"  spiritual "  as  they  have  been  used  in  this 
discussion  be  synonymous  with  the  term 
"  Christian "  when  it  is  applied  to  the  emo- 
tions. At  present,  however,  we  cannot  fault 
an  artist  if  his  morals  and  his  spirituality  have 
reached  the  stage  common  to  good  men  in 
every  clime  and  of  every  religious  faith.  We 
may,  however,  find  it  natural  to  be  more 
closely  drawn  to  those  artists  whose  emotions 
are  "  spiritual "  in  our  own  more  intimate 
sense  of  the  term.  There  cannot,  however, 
be  the  least  excuse  for  a  sectarian  interpreta- 
tion of  the  term  "  spiritual."  Christianity  is 
catholic  in  its  aspirations  and  hence  the 
phrase  "Christian  art"  is  not  a  misnomer; 
but  a  sectarian  or  even  a  puritan  art  would  be 
things  to  smile  at,  could  they  ever  exist. 
John  Milton  was  a  great  artist,  not  because 
he  was  a  puritan,  but  partly  in  spite  of  it. 
It  is  well  to  note,  however,  that  while  the 
artistic  spirit  is  distracted  by  dissent,  it  is 
smothered  by  intolerance. 


121 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 


III 


THE  relations  sustained  to  morals  by  the 
reader  or  by  the  recipient  of  aesthetic  pleasure 
in  general  may  be  considered  from  the  three- 
fold point  of  view  of  his  duty  to  the  writer  or 
artist,  to  himself,  and  to  his  fellow  men  at 
large. 

It  may  fairly  be  said  that  very  few  readers 
pay  any  attention  to  the  first  duty.  They 
are  forever  thinking  of  what  a  writer  owes 
them,  but  seldom  of  their  reciprocal  obliga- 
tions. Yet  it  is  plain  that  these  obligations 
exist.  It  is  clear  that  as  a  writer's  fame  and 
a  large  part  of  his  happiness  in  this  life 
depend  upon  the  success  of  his  writings,  it  is 
the  duty  of  all  his  readers  to  censure  him 
only  when  they  are  very  sure  that  they  have 
just  grounds  for  so  doing.  Irresponsible, 
uninformed  censorious  criticism  is  morally 
wrong;  according  to  the  phrase  of  Milton  it 
partakes  of  the  nature  of  spiritual  murder. 
Uninformed  enthusiastic  praise  is  also  in  real- 
ity unjust  to  the  writer  and  is  certainly  unfair 
to  one's  fellow  men  —  but  this  may  be  passed 
over  as  venial.  Yet  our  duty  to  the  writer 
does  not  stop  here,  for  we  have  the  posi- 
tive duty  incumbent  on  us  of  endeavoring,  so 

122 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

far  as  may  be  consistent  with  our  other 
duties  in  life,  to  master  the  general  principles 
of  criticism,  of  reading  the  current  books  that 
the  best  critics  recommend  to  us,  and  of  try- 
ing so  to  fit  ourselves  aesthetically,  intellec- 
tually, and  morally  that  any  good  writer  can 
make  a  friend  of  us  when  we  read  his  books. 
This  is  the  golden  rule  of  .reading —  and  it  is 
true,  of  course,  with  regard  to  our  attitudes 
toward  all  the  arts — that  we  should  try  to 
make  ourselves  the  kind  of  readers  we  should 
like  to  have  if  we  were  authors.  This  does 
not  mean  that  we  should  not  read  for  mere 
recreation,  or  that  the  art  of  literature  or  any 
other  of  the  arts  should  cease  to  give  us 
pleasure  and  should  yield  us  only  solid  bene- 
fits; it  merely  means  that  in  justice  to  our- 
selves and  to  our  fellow  men  who  try  to  please 
us,  we  ought  to  put  ourselves  into  very  much 
such  relations  with  artists  as  we  should  sus- 
tain with  our  fellow  men  in  general  society. 
It  is  our  duty  to  perfect  our  manners  in 
order  to  fit  ourselves  for  our  social  functions ; 
it  is  similarly  our  duty,  although  not  so 
paramount  a  one,  to  perfect  our  judgments 
and  tastes  in  order  to  meet  half  way  the 
artists  who  seek  to  minister  to  our  aesthetic 
pleasures. 

There  is  much  in  what  has  just  been  said 
123 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

that  relates  to  the  duty  of  the  reader  to  him- 
self. He  owes  it  to  himself  to  do  all  in  his 
power  to  put  himself  into  a  proper  attitude 
toward  the  art  of  literature,  simply  because  it 
is  his  duty  to  try  to  develop  all  the  faculties 
that  God  has  given  him.  Unfortunately  such 
self-training  is  irksome  to  most  people  and 
thus  defeats  its  own  ends ;  but  we  may  be 
sure  that  if  we  had  perfectly  balanced  souls 
every  step  made  in  the  right  direction  would 
be  pleasurable  in  itself  and  would  lead  to  joys 
ineffable.  As  it  is  we  are  at  least  under  some 
obligation  with  regard  to  the  development  of 
our  critical  faculties ;  for  literature  and  the 
arts  have  their  place  in  every  system  of 
liberal  education,  and  we  all  acknowledge 
that  it  is  our  duty  to  educate  ourselves  as 
well  as  we  can.  Hitherto  the  part  played  by 
art  in  education  of  a  formal  character  has 
been  so  small  that  we  have  ignored  our 
responsibilities  in  the  matter;  and  the  fact 
that  the  critics  have  insisted  upon  pleasure  as 
the  end  and  purpose  of  art  has  contributed 
to  the  same  result.  The  idea  that  there  is 
a  duty  attaching  to  something  that  minis- 
ters to  our  pleasures  is  one  that  few  of  us  can 
grasp. 

Yet   if  an   art   ministers  to   our   spiritual 
needs  —  and  all  true  art  does —  is  it  not  our 
124 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

duty  to  fit  ourselves  to  appreciate  it,  and 
does  not  appreciation  widen  and  deepen  with 
the  training  and  development  of  our  critical 
faculties?  There  can  be  only  one  answer  to 
these  questions  and  this  answer  forces  us  to 
acknowledge  that  the  principles  of  criticism 
have  authority  over  us  all.  But  what  this 
authority  is  in  kind  and  degree  is  and  has 
been  for  ages  a  subject  of  dispute  among 
critics  themselves  and  to  investigate  the  prob- 
lem in  this  connection  would  carry  us  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  an  essay.  Besides,  I 
have  already  discussed  the  matter  to  the  best 
of  my  ability  elsewhere  in  this  volume,  and  it 
must  therefore  suffice  us  here  merely  to  in- 
sist that  in  the  interests  of  self-development 
the  reader  must  sooner  or  later  submit  him- 
self to  some  sort  of  critical  training  and  that 
if  we  do  not  at  present  regard  the  failure  to 
do  this  as  a  moral  lapse,  it  is  because  we 
have  not  yet  thought  the  matter  out  in  all  its 
details,  and  because  we  are  not  yet  moral 
enough  as  a  race  in  the  larger  particulars  to 
be  able  to  consider  seriously  our  deficiencies 
in  the  smaller  particulars. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  duties  of  the  reader 

toward  his  fellow  men  in  general  cannot   be 

thoroughly  separated  from  his  duties  toward 

the  writer  and  toward  himself.     For  example 

125 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

he  owes  it  to  an  author  who  has  charmed 
him,  to  acknowledge  his  debt  of  gratitude; 
but  he  owes  this  equally  to  his  fellow  men. 
One  of  the  most  delightful  features  of  sympa- 
thetic criticism  is  its  missionary  quality.  We 
cannot  rest  until  we  have  expatiated  to  our 
friends  upon  the  merits  of  each  fascinating 
book  we  read,  and  it  is  not  only  our  privilege 
thus  to  communicate  our  feelings  but  our 
duty.  Yet  here  as  in  all  missionary  work  our 
responsibilities  are  great  and  the  need  of  sub- 
mitting ourselves  to  the  authority  of  criticism 
is  plain.  We  have  no  right  to  praise  unad- 
visedly a  book  or  picture.  We  think  that  our 
individual  opinion  counts  for  little,  and  so  it 
does,  but  just  as  in  politics  we  have  no  right 
to  plead  our  personal  insignificance  when  we 
vote  carelessly  or  not  at  all,  so  in  literary  and 
artistic  matters  we  have  no  right  to  forget  that 
our  individual  opinion  helps  to  mould  other 
opinions  and  thus  to  form  the  popular  verdict. 
Books  become  the  "  book  of  the  hour"  more 
through  the  gossip  of  the  club  and  parlor 
than  through  the  praise  accorded  them  by 
responsible  critical  journals.  It  was  gossip 
that  spread  the  contagion  of  Trilby. 

But,  some  one  will  exclaim,  this  is  refining 
and  splitting  hairs  with  a  vengeance.      Life 
would  not  be  worth  living  if  one  had  to  weigh 
126 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

one's  praise  of  a  book,  a  picture,  even  a 
magazine  article  as  carefully  as  one  weighs 
one's  words  when  serving  as  a  witness  in  an 
important  trial.  If  a  code  of  artistic  ethics 
like  this  is  to  be  fastened  upon  us,  the  old 
maxim  "  Life  is  short,  but  art  is  long  "  would 
run  for  most  of  us  "  Life  is  short,  and  art  is  a 
nuisance." 

If  there  is  any  justice  in  this  supposed  ex- 
postulation it  lies  in  the  fact  that  much  of 
what  has  been  said  belongs  to  those  "  counsels 
of  perfection"  that  often  seem  to  be  counsels 
of  impertinence  when  we  consider  how  full 
life  is  of  large  moral  demands  that  we  cannot 
satisfy  with  all  our  striving  and  all  our  prayers. 
But  surely  the  race  would  lose  ground  daily 
if  preachers  and  teachers  and  critics  and 
philosophers  ceased  for  one  moment  to 
shower  "  counsels  of  perfection "  upon  us. 
What  would  Christianity  —  much  more  any 
other  religion  —  become  if  it  were  stripped 
of  such  counsels?  We  may,  indeed,  make 
allowances  for  ourselves  and  others  in  all  such 
subtle,  scarcely  perceptible  matters  of  duty, 
but  we  must  not  the  less  insist  that  the  sphere 
of  duty  is  all  embracing,  that  we  cannot 
escape  from  moral  obligations  anywhere  in 
this  world  of  ours  —  not  even  in  the  Vatican 
itself  when  we  stand  gazing  at  one  of  Raphael's 
127 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

frescoes;  for  even  there  our  admiration  must 
be  mixed  with  gratitude.  Would  that  all 
duties  were  so  pleasant  1 

But  if  we  consent  to  excuse  the  average 
reader  from  being  held  to  strict  account  with 
regard  to  our  "  counsels  of  perfection,"  we 
should  make  no  excuse  for  readers  who  are 
clothed  with  any  sort  of  authority.  Even 
clergymen  and  lawyers,  who  are  not  especially 
concerned  in  literature  and  art,  should  take 
care  how  they  pass  judgment  upon  this  book 
and  that  picture,  simply  because  they  are 
generally  looked  up  to  in  every  community. 
The  teacher—  and  especially  the  teacher  of 
literature  —  occupies  a  still  more  responsible 
position.  He  forms  the  mind  of  youth,  and 
a  mere  careless  word  in  praise  of  a  book  of 
dubious  morality  may  suffice  to  give  a  down- 
ward thrust  to  some  young  life.  His  habits 
of  reading,  his  general  attitude  toward  art  are 
of  immense  importance  in  every  college  com- 
munity, and  indirectly  in  the  world  at  large. 
It  would  be  hard  to  estimate  the  harm  that 
has  been  done  to  the  young  men  of  this 
country  through  the  discovery  they  must 
have  been  making  of  late  that  most  of  their 
teachers  are  specialists  —  knowing  only  one 
class  of  books  and  caring  little  for  literature 
and  art  in  their  widest  application.  It  would 
128 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

be  hard  also  to  estimate  the  harm  done  by 
injudicious  methods  of  presenting  the  most 
fascinating  subjects  that  have  fallen  to  the  lot 
of  man  to  teach.  But  in  all  these  matters 
there  is  hope  ahead. 

We  may  conclude  this  branch  of  our 
discussion  by  remarking  that  there  is  one 
great  moral  obligation  resting  upon  the 
reader  that  may  be  considered  in  general 
without  reference  to  our  threefold  division. 
It  has  already  been  referred  to.  No  reader 
has  a  right  to  expect  that  an  author  or  an 
artist  shall  consult  his  individual  idiosyncra- 
sies, or  even  his  preferences  in  religious, 
social,  and  political  matters.  We  can  appre- 
ciate a  universal  art  only  by  cultivating 
catholicity  of  spirit.  If  indeed  our  mind  is 
made  up  on  this  or  that  important  matter,  it 
will  follow  naturally  that  the  writer  or  artist 
who  runs  counter  to  our  convictions  will 
forfeit  that  portion  of  success  which  is  depen- 
dent upon  his  power  to  give  us  strictly  intel- 
lectual pleasure;  but  if  his  work  of  art  is 
great  from  the  point  of  view  of  aesthetics  and 
if  it  yields  us  the  moral  pleasure  that  attaches 
to  what  is  good  in  the  widest  sense,  it  is  a 
sign  of  mental  inflexibility  in  us  if  we  fail  to 
receive  enjoyment  We  simply  have  no  right 
to  let  our  minds  harden  to  such  an  extent 
9  129 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

that  they  cannot  play  freely  around  any  work 
of  literary  or  plastic  art.  All  purely  utili- 
tarian demands  made  upon  writers  and 
artists,  demands  that  they  shall  teach  thus 
and  so,  that  their  works  shall  support  our 
theories  —  are  due  to  this  mental  induration 
from  which  not  one  of  us  escapes.  Mr. 
Hardy's  Tess  has  encountered  many  such  ad- 
amantine minds  in  its  short  voyage.  Whole 
classes  of  books  sometimes  share  this  fate 
most  undeservedly — as  for  example  the 
coarse  but  splendidly  powerful  novels  pro- 
duced in  the  last  century —  particularly  those 
of  Fielding.  Coarseness  and  immorality  so 
often  go  hand  in  hand  that  many  of  us  cannot 
distinguish  between  them,  and  our  power  of 
isolating  ourselves  from  our  own  time  and 
civilization  is  so  feeble  that  our  minds  cannot 
play  around  these  books  and  we  express  the 
lurid  wish  of  the  late  Mr.  Sidney  Lanier,  that 
they  may  all  be  burned  instanter.  The  fact 
is  that  Fielding's  Tom  Jones  is  probably 
the  greatest  English  novel  and  that  its  loss 
would  be  a  calamity.  If,  however,  experience 
has  proved  to  us  that  such  books  are  not  good 
for  us,  any  more  than  they  are  for  very  young 
minds,  it  is  of  course  our  duty  to  pass  them 
by.  But  there  is  no  excuse  for  our  blinking 
the  fact  that  our  minds  are  indurated  or  for 
130 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

our  setting  ourselves  up  as  ultra-pure  literary 
prohibitionists  —  that  is  as  Pharisees. 


IV 

IT  is  clear  that  nearly  everything  that  has 
been  hitherto  said  could  be  made  applicable, 
by  means  of  a  few  turns  of  phrase,  to  our 
discussion  of  the  relations  between  the  writ- 
ten work  and  morals  in  general.  It  is  clear 
also  that  the  subject  might  be  treated  in- 
definitely ;  I  shall  therefore  confine  myself  to 
one  phase  of  it,  to  wit,  the  question  how  far 
the  moral  element  in  literature  seems  to  have 
affected  the  race  in  its  determination  of  the 
books  it  is  willing  to  rank  as  classics.  If  any 
important  facts  can  be  obtained  with  regard 
to  the  relations  of  the  classics  to  morals,  it 
will  be  far  easier  to  draw  inferences  with 
regard  to  the  relations  that  ought  to  subsist 
between  morals  and  general  literature  than  it 
would  be  to  draw  such  inferences  from  purely 
abstract  considerations  based  on  the  nature 
of  literature  or  from  a  discussion  of  contem- 
porary phases  of  literary  art.  These  infer- 
ences will  not,  however,  be  drawn  here,  for 
to  draw  them  would  be  to  protract  this  essay 
to  a  really  intolerable  length. 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

The  first  fact  that  strikes  us  in  considering 
the  classics  from  our  present  point  of  view  is 
that  if  we  take  the  absolutely  supreme  master- 
pieces of  the  nations,  they  are  all  not  merely 
not  immoral,  but  profoundly  and  positively 
moral.  The  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  the  odes 
of  Pindar  and  the  dramas  of  Sophocles,  the 
JEneid,  the  Divine  Comedy,  the  plays  of 
Shakspere,  the  Don  Quixote,  the  greatest 
plays  of  Corneille,  Moliere,  and  Racine,  the 
Paradise  Lost,  Goethe's  Faust,  the  Co-medie 
Humaine,  and  the  Legende  des  Siecles  —  all 
these  noble  works  of  genius  would  be  abso- 
lutely changed  and  clearly  weakened  if  we 
could  take  from  them  their  capacity  to  stir 
our  moral  emotions.  Now  could  this  capa- 
city have  existed  to  such  an  extent  in  these 
masterpieces  if  their  authors  had  not  felt 
emotions  similar  to  those  we  experience?  It 
is  hard  to  believe  that  it  could ;  and  it  is 
equally  hard  to  believe  that  the  capability  to 
feel  and  excite  such  emotions  is  not  as  neces- 
sary to  a  supreme  author's  success  as  the 
more  strictly  artistic  capacity  to  feel  aesthetic 
emotions  and  give  vent  to  them  by  means  of 
infinitely  varied  rhythm  and  euphony,  and 
command  over  the  emotional  elements  of 
language.  The  possession  and  use  of  the 
grand  style  mark  off  Homer  and  Dante, 
132 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

Shakspere  and  Milton  from  the  mass  of 
poets,  but,  as  Matthew  Arnold  was  never  tired 
of  telling  us,  a  "  high  seriousness  "  marks  them 
off  as  well.  I  am  not  going  to  try  to  defend 
Mr.  Arnold's  description  of  poetry  as  a  "  criti- 
cism of  life"  or  to  take  up  cudgels  in  his. 
behalf  against  the  many  critics  and  readers 
who  think  that  he  sometimes  mixed  disas- 
trously his  roles  of  critic  and  moralist ;  but  I 
will  say  that  I  think  the  whole  English  speak- 
ing world  owes  him  a  debt  of  gratitude  for 
his  insistence  upon  the  fact  that  all  really 
great  literature  is  profoundly  moral  in  tone. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark  that  this 
does  not  mean  that  the  supreme  authors 
preach  to  us  or  that  great  literature  is  obtru- 
sively moral  or  spiritual  —  outside,  of  course, 
of  specifically  sacred  and  spiritual  books  — 
but  it  does  mean  that  all  of  the  works  belong- 
ing to  the  highest  range  of  the  world's  classics 
have  their  underlying  moral  basis,  just  as. 
they  have  their  intellectual  basis,  and  their 
aesthetic  basis. 

It  is  to  be  observed  further  that  all  these 
works  are  not  merely  those  that  the  critics 
have  agreed  to  rank  as  supreme,  but  they  are 
those  that  the  public  at  large  among  the 
respective  races  and  nations  that  have  given 
them  birth  have  accepted  and  treated  as 
133 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

supreme.  The  greatest  masterpieces  of  Greek 
literature,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  were  also 
the  most  popular,  and  the  same  is  true  of 
the  works  of  Virgil,  Dante,  Shakspere  and 
Goethe.  The  Latin  race  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  regard  as  not  profoundly  moral,  is 
in  this  respect  at  one  with  the  more  sober 
Teutonic  race.  The  inference  is  irresistible 
that  no  writer  can  attain  the  position  of  a 
world  classic  who  is  not  as  much  an  uncon- 
scious moralist  as  he  is  a  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious artist. 

Nor  is  the  case  altered  when  we  come  to 
consider  the  great  literary  men  who  are 
either  not  entitled  to  rank  as  supreme  classics 
anywhere  or  else  rank  as  such  only  in  their 
own  country.  Chaucer  is  an  example  of  the 
latter  class  —  supreme  in  English  poetry  after 
Shakspere  and  Milton,  he  is  yet  not  a  world 
classic.  Mr.  Arnold  has  said  that  this  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  Chaucer  has  not  sufficient 
seriousness,  and  largeness  of  view.  I  am 
inclined  to  doubt  this  and  to  wonder  whether 
Chaucer  may  not  in  the  more  cosmopolitan 
future  attain  the  rank  of  a  world  classic,  for  it 
seems  to  me  that  he  is  deeply  moral  and 
truly  serious  under  his  playful  smiles.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  Chaucer,  even  in  tales  that  are 
coarse  to  our  present  notions,  is  always  whole- 
134 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

some  and  moral  and  so  illustrates  the  truth 
of  our  contention.  Spenser  with  his  exquisite 
purity,  illustrates  it  even  better,  and  so  do 
Gray  and  Burns.  Wordsworth  illustrates  it, 
but  at  the  same  time  shows  us  that  mere 
seriousness  unaccompanied  by  a  continuously 
great  style  will  not  suffice  to  attain  true 
popularity.  Tennyson  illustrates  admirably 
how  a  writer  who  combines  moral  seriousness 
and  artistic  excellence  may  attain  the  sum- 
mit of  contemporary  renown.  Shelley  on  the 
other  hand  shows  us  how  the  possession  of 
exquisite  artistic  gifts  and  the  warm  worship 
of  a  zealous  body  of  admirers  will  not  make 
any  writer  truly  popular  if  his  subject  matter 
be  not  entirely  sound.  Even  Keats  himself 
is  still  suffering  from  the  fact  that  Death  did 
not  give  him  time  to  ripen  the  moral  side  of 
his  nature ;  and  Byron  is  naturally  suffering 
still  more  from  the  same  cause.  But  all  these 
men  are  true  classics  because  their  work, 
either  in  whole  or  in  part,  will  stand  the 
moral  test  and  because  it  can  obviously  stand 
the  aesthetic  and  intellectual  tests.  Byron 
indeed  has  come  perilously  near  falling  from 
the  position  due  to  his  transcendent  genius  — 
there  are  not  wanting  people  to  tell  us  that 
he  actually  has  fallen —  but  here  again  I  find 
myself  by  Mr.  Arnold's  side  contending  that 
135 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

a  large  part  of  his  work  is  sound  and  that  his 
energy,  his  sincerity,  his  humor,  his  range  of 
intellect  and  feelings  —  make  him  the  great 
literary  power  that  the  continental  nations 
still  believe  him  to  be. 

I  have  included  in  the  above  list  of  writers 
none  but  Englishmen  and  poets,  but  I  believe 
that  the  contention  made  can  easily  be  estab- 
lished with  regard  to  secondary  prose  classics 
in  England  and  with  regard  to  secondary 
classics  generally  in  the  great  European  liter- 
atures. It  must  be  remembered,  of  course, 
that  as  the  intellect  plays  a  considerable 
part  in  all  literature  even  in  poetry,  certain 
writers  have  attained  positions  as  classics 
chiefly  through  the  intellectual  side  of  their 
works.  These  men  are  all  secondary  classics, 
however,  and  the  moral  element  is  never 
lacking  from  their  writings,  for  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  use  the  intellect  in  a  way  that 
will  tell  materially  upon  future  generations 
unless  it  is  used  on  the  side  of  morals.  Pope 
and  Boileau  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  truth 
of  this  statement. 

The  proposition  that  the  supreme  and 
secondary  classics  of  the  various  nations  are 
on  the  whole  distinctly  moral  will  not,  in  the 
natural  order  of  things,  escape  contradiction. 
A  notorious  educator  has  lately  discovered 
136 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

that  Virgil  is  not  a  safe  author  for  schoolboys 
to  read,  and  Mr.  Sidney  Lanier's  views  with 
regard  to  the  morality  of  Fielding  and  Smol- 
lett have  just  been  referred  to.  I  can  imagine 
quite  an  army  of  worthy  citizens  of  the  type 
of  Mr.  Comstock  brandishing  a  host  of  books 
at  me  if  I  were  once  to  get  in  their  midst  and 
they  were  at  all  widely  read.  Horace  and 
Rabelais  and  Boccaccio  and  Margaret  of 
Navarre  would  shudder  to  behold  their  works 
used  as  missiles,  and  Shakspere  would  be 
almost  the  only  Elizabethan  dramatist  who 
could  look  on  serenely.  As  to  the  French 
novelists,  their  only  consolation  would  lie  in 
the  fact  that  their  loosely  stitched  volumes 
would  come  to  pieces  so  easily  as  to  be  in- 
effective in  offensive  warfare.  But  although 
I  might  be  smothered  in  paper  I  should  die 
exclaiming  that  coarseness  is  not  and  never 
has  been  synonymous  with  immorality  and 
that  no  really  immoral  author  has  ever  won 
the  suffrages  either  of  the  majority  of  his 
contemporaries  or  of  posterity. 

This  contention  has,  to  be  sure,  been  made 
thousands  of  times  ere  this,  and  it  will  doubt- 
less be  made  thousands  of  times  hereafter; 
but  it  none  the  less  needs  making  everywhere 
and  always.  It  is  the  emotions  of  the  author 
and  the  reader  that  determine  the  moral 
137 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

character  of  a  book,  and  whenever  the  author 
has  been  pure  in  the  main,  as  has  been  the 
case  with  the  truly  classical  writers,  a  pure- 
minded  reader  of  mature  years  and  no  special 
idiosyncrasies  will  find  little  or  nothing  to  fault 
in  the  morals  of  the  literary  work  in  question. 
This  is  true  no  matter  what  characters  and 
situations  may  be  found  in  the  book —  if  it  be- 
long to  the  drama  or  fiction  —  or  what  ma- 
terial in  general  may  be  used  by  the  writer. 
The  essential  point  in  all  artistic  work  is  the 
treatment  of  the  materials.  Improper  ma- 
terials are  those  that  cannot  be  treated  with 
pure  emotions  by  any  normal  artist,  hence  it 
is  idle  to  pick  out  this  or  that  incident  from  a 
book  and  declare  that  it  makes  for  or  against 
morality  unless  one  can  show  conclusively 
that  the  author  has  so  treated  it  that  normally 
decent  men  have  their  sensibilities  shocked 
by  it.  This  I  believe  it  will  be  impossible  to 
do  with  regard  to  any  truly  classic  book 
except  in  the  particular  of  obscenity,  which 
is  not  immoral  per  se  but  only  by  association. 
If  a  reader  cannot  tolerate  obscenity  he  will, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  do  well  to  eschew 
certain  noted  books,  but  he  should  not  regard 
them  as  necessarily  immoral.  Such  books 
will  probably  lose  popularity  more  and  more 
as  our  tastes  change  and  develop,  and  they 
138 


LITERATURE  AND   MORALS 

may  in  the  end  be  practically  dropped  from 
the  list  of  the  classics  unless  their  positive 
merits  suffice  to  keep  them  really  alive  —  but 
this  is  a  side  issue  on  which  enough  has  been 
said. 

The  actually  immoral  book  does  not  there- 
fore in  my  opinion  stand  any  chance  of  rank- 
ing among  the  classics,  but  it  is  possible 
for  unmoral  books  to  attain  this  rank.  For 
example  Foe  is  one  of  the  least  positively 
moral  and  spiritual  authors  that  I  have  ever 
read,  but  his  rank  as  a  classic  is  indisputable, 
although  part  of  his  comparative  lack  of  suc- 
cess in  certain  portions  of  this  country  may 
perhaps  be  traced  to  the  absence  of  a  moral 
basis  for  his  literary  work.  But  in  Poe's  case 
we  have  a  wonderful  surplus  of  aesthetic  and 
intellectual  qualities  to  make  up  for  the  de- 
ficiency in  positively  moral  qualities.  Then 
again  it  must  be  remembered  both  that  his 
genius  moved  in  spheres  so  remote  from 
"  this  dim  spot  which  men  call  earth "  that 
considerations  of  morality  scarcely  seem  to 
apply  to  his  creations,  and  that  there  is  hardly 
an  author  to  be  named  who  so  little  suggests 
the  actually  immoral.  Foe  is  an  essentially 
pure  writer,  yet  his  purity  is  so  cold  and 
weird  that  we  do  not  obtain  from  it  the  glow 
needed  to  excite  our  moral  emotions. 
139 


LITERATURE   AND   MORALS 

But  it  is  time  to  bring  this  essay  to  an  end, 
and  there  is  perhaps  no  better  way  to  do  this 
than  to  sum  up  briefly  the  main  conclusions 
suggested  by  our  analysis.  We  have  practi- 
cally been  led  to  believe  that  every  truly  suc- 
cessful author  and  artist  must  necessarily 
possess  the  emotions  of  a  gentleman,  which 
will  ensure  the  modicum  of  spirituality  re- 
quired. We  have  seen  further  that  every 
reader  should  strip  himself  as  far  as  possible 
of  his  idiosyncrasies,  should  meet  the  author 
half  way,  and  should  exercise  due  care  in 
forming  and  uttering  his  literary  opinions. 
Finally  we  have  found  reason  to  maintain 
that  all  truly  classic  literature  has  a  moral 
basis,  whence  we  conclude  that  if  the  classics 
continue  to  exert  their  due  influence  we  need 
not  fear  that  immoral  and  deleterious  forms 
of  literature  and  art  can  ever  really  flourish  in 
our  midst.1 

1  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy  in  his  delightful  Reminiscences 
(I.,  60-64)  has  lately  given  us  John  Bright's  interesting 
theory  that  all  bad  characters  should  be  omitted  from 
novels.  Perhaps  they  will  be  dropped,  just  as  obscenity 
has  been,  but  the  consummation  is  a  good  way  off. 


140 


IV 
THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 


141 


IV 


THE      NATURE     OF     LITERA- 
TURE 


I 


FROM  time  out  of  mind  critics  have  en- 
deavored without  success  to  define  litera- 
ture. They  have  all  been  more  or  less  able 
to  describe  it ;  they  have  all  been  fairly  well 
agreed  as  to  many  of  its  chief  character- 
istics ;  they  have  seldom  failed  in  the  long 
run  to  answer  satisfactorily  the  concrete 
question  whether  a  certain  piece  of  writing 
belongs  or  not  to  literature ;  and  yet  they 
have  never  succeeded  in  discovering  infal- 
lible tests  by  which  every  reader  can  assure 
himself  of  the  literary  or  non-literary  char- 
acter of  any  specific  composition.  In  fact, 
they  have  not  themselves  succeeded  in  using 
the  word  "  literature  "  with  appreciable  con- 
sistency. The  dictionaries,  which  register 
public  and  critical  usage  with  regard  to  the 
meanings  of  terms,  give  us  a  number  of 
senses  in  which  this  particular  term  may  be 
143 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

correctly  employed.  It  may  be  equivalent 
to  "  learning ;  "  it  may  mean  "  the  use  of 
letters  for  the  promulgation  of  thought  or 
knowledge ;  "  it  may  signify  "  recorded 
thought  of  knowledge,  the  aggregate  of 
books  and  other  publications,  in  either  an 
unlimited  or  a  limited  sense "  —  that  is  to 
say,  all  books,  or  books  in  a  special  language, 
or  about  a  special  subject,  such  as  chem- 
istry ;  finally,  it  may  express  "  in  a  restricted 
sense  the  class  of  writings  in  which  expres- 
sion and  form  in  connection  with  ideas  of 
permanent  and  universal  interest  are  char- 
acteristic or  essential  features,  as  poetry, 
romance,  history,"  etc.,  "  in  contradistinction 
to  scientific  works  or  those  written  expressly 
to  impart  knowledge." 

The  above  definitions  are  all  taken  from 
the  "  Century  Dictionary,"  and  it  will  be 
seen  at  once  that,  unless  they  are  analyzed, 
they  will  prove  of  little  service  to  the 
thoughtful  student.  The  first  two  uses  of 
the  term  are  plainly  of  a  secondary  or  de- 
rived character,  and  need  not  concern  us, 
while  we  perceive  immediately  that  the 
third  is  too  large  to  be  of  any  real  value 
to  us.  "  Recorded  thought  or  knowledge '" 
is  a  definition  that  will  dignify  with  the  title 
of  literary  men  the  Pharaohs,  who  carved 
144 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

their  names  on  pyramids;  the  Roman 
Emperors,  who  recorded  their  exploits  on 
triumphal  arches;  the  Druids,  who  couched 
their  mysteries  in  oghams;  the  English 
monks,  who  set  down  year  by  year  the 
forays  of  the  Danes;  together  with  the 
obliging  dealers  of  the  present  time  who 
compile  catalogues  of  secondhand  books, 
the  Congressmen  who  distribute  their  own 
speeches  gratis,  and  the  statisticians,  ex- 
pert or  otherwise,  who  superintend  the  pub- 
lication of  our  decennial  census.  All  these 
enumerated  persons,  together  with  mathe- 
maticians, chemists,  physicians,  lawyers, 
theologians,  and  the  rest  of  the  men  who 
write  and  print  with  the  result  of  merely 
adding  to  our  knowledge,  may  be  worthy 
of  high  praise,  but  cannot  be  called  literary 
if  that  epithet  is  to  have  any  appreciable 
value.  The  study  of  literature  under  such 
circumstances  would  be  practically  bounded 
only  by  the  sphere  of  human  knowledge. 
Some  line  of  demarcation  must  be  drawn 
if  "  literature  "  is  to  be  regarded  as  anything 
less  than  a  purely  indefinite,  almost  infinite, 
term. 

Such  a  line  of  demarcation  has  been  drawn 
in  the  framing  of  the  fourth  definition  given 
above,  and  it  coincides  obviously  with  that 
145 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

adopted  by  De  Quincey  when  he  wrote  of 
the  literature  of  knowledge  as  opposed  to 
the  literature  of  power,  as  well  as  with  that 
chosen  by  Charles  Lamb  when  he  distin- 
guished between  books  that  are  "  no  books  " 
and  books  that  are  really  books  —  which 
live  and  delight  their  readers  —  the  kind  of 
books  Milton  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote 
that  it  would  be  as  wicked  to  kill  a  good 
book  as  to  kill  a  good  man.  Mr.  John 
Morley  also  gives  the  same  idea  in  a  slightly 
different  form  when  he  says  that  "  literature 
consists  of  all  the  books  —  and  they  are  not 
so  many  —  where  moral  truth  and  human 
passion  are  touched  with  a  certain  largeness, 
severity,  and  attractiveness  of  form." 

But  have  we  not  passed  from  too  large  a 
definition  of  our  term  to  one  that  is  too 
small?  Are  not  some  of  Mr.  Huxley's 
essays,  which  he  intended  to  make  and  did 
make  scientific  in  character,  regarded  as 
literature  by  many  people,  and  on  just 
grounds?  Again,  are  the  ideas  expressed 
by  such  a  poem  as  Foe's  Ulalume  fairly 
to  be  described  as  possessing  permanent  and 
universal  interest,  or  does  the  poem  itself 
touch  moral  truth  with  any  largeness  of  form  ? 
Yet  are  we  prepared  to  say  that  Ulalume 
is  not  literature,  even  though  it  is  not  a 
146 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

book,  and  is  thus  outside  the  precise  terms 
of  Mr.   Morley's  definition? 

The  truth  is  that,  while  we  are  plainly  on 
the  right  track  when  we  attempt  to  separate 
the  nobly  moving  and  powerful  books  from 
those  that  merely  convey  information  in  a 
more  or  less  perfunctory  manner,  we  find  it 
difficult  to  get  a  definition  that  will  suit  us, 
because  we  are  trying  to  define  what  is  really 
the  product  of  an  art,  and  may  therefore  be, 
so  far  as  its  subject-matter  is  concerned, 
as  large  as  life  expressed  in  terms  of  the 
medium  of  expression  peculiar  to  that  art 
can  ever  be.  Now  life  itself  is  practically 
indefinable  and  infinite,  and,  as  one  can 
recognize  almost  at  a  glance,  the  medium  of 
expression  used  by  the  art  of  literature  — 
to  wit,  words  in  certain  combinations  —  is 
practically  infinite  also.  We  are,  therefore, 
trying  to  define  a  product  that  may  assume 
as  many  forms  almost  as  life  —  an  attempt 
which  is  hopeless,  especially  when  we  insist 
on  laying  stress  upon  subject-matter  in 
framing  our  definition.  We  simply  cannot 
say  that  literature  is  in  essence  any  particu- 
lar thing,  because  its  subject-matter,  which 
is  its  essence,  may  be  everything.  But  we 
may  perhaps  find  it  possible  to  get  a  work- 
ing description  of  literature  that  will  suffice 
147 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

for  all  our  purpos«s  if  we  will  frankly  say 
that  we  believe  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
an  art  of  literature  which  expresses  itself 
by  means  of  words,  much  as  music  does 
by  means  of  sounds,  painting  by  means  of 
an  arrangement  of  colors  on  some  material, 
etc.  Then,  without  asking  ourselves  what 
our  finished  literary  product  is  in  its  essence, 
let  us  ask  ourselves  what  methods  of  em- 
ploying words  have  been  used  by  great 
writers  in  the  past  to  produce  work  which 
the  world  has  agreed  to  regard  as  literary 
in  character.  In  other  words,  we  will  imitate 
the  critic  of  music  who  studies  to  determine 
the  artistic  methods  of  the  great  composers 
of  recent  times.  If  we  can  find  that  there 
are  certain  principles  of  word-arrangement 
common  to  all  works  that  the  world  has  re- 
ceived as  good  literature,  just  as  there  are 
certain  principles  of  sound-arrangement  com- 
mon to  all  true  music,  we  shall  then  be  able 
to  say  with  confidence  that  literature  is  the 
product  of  an  art  which  deals  with  words  in 
a  certain  way;  and  if  our  "certain  way" 
be  not  easily  definable,  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised, for  all  art  is  the  expression  of  human 
genius,  which  is  itself  indefinable,  and  many 
things  in  this  life  can  be  recognized  that  can- 
not be  defined. 

148 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

It  must  be  admitted,  of  course,  that,  in 
treating  literature  as  the  sum  total  of  the  pro- 
ducts of  what  we  have  called  literary  art,  we 
are  not  improving  our  condition  from  the 
point  of  view  of  critical  theory.  It  is  much 
easier  to  describe  any  art  than  to  define  it, 
but  students  of  painting  and  the  other  fine 
arts  have  usually  less  difficulty  than  students 
of  literature  in  describing  the  products  of 
their  respective  arts.  This  is  mainly  because 
they  begin  with  certain  freely  conceded  pos- 
tulates with  regard  to  the  nature  of  art  in 
general.  They  assume  that  the  product  of  any 
art  must,  to  be  legitimate,  give  pleasure  of  an 
emotional  kind  connected  with  the  idea  of 
beauty,  although,  according  to  some  critics, 
pleasure  of  an  intellectual  kind  connected 
with  the  idea  of  truth  and  of  a  moral  kind 
connected  with  the  idea  of  right  conduct,  are 
often  present  also,  and  in  the  greatest  works 
of  art  are  indispensable.1  They  assume,  fur- 
ther, that  when  the  quality  of  usefulness  is 
connected  with  a  work  of  art,  it  must  not 
interfere  considerably  with  the  quality  of 
beauty.  Making  the  satisfaction  of  the  aes- 

1  Here  and  elsewhere  I  make  no  pretence  of  using  psy- 
chological terms  with  scientific  accuracy.  I  trust,  however, 
that  the  untechnical  terms  employed  will  make  my  mean- 
ing sufficiently  clear. 

149 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

thetic  sense  a  sine  qua  non  of  artistic  produc- 
tion, art  critics  are  thus,  on  the  whole,  able 
to  pronounce  with  adequate  certainty  on  the 
question  whether  a  given  product  is  artistic 
or  not,  because  they  ask  rather  what  a  work 
of  art  does,  than  what  it  is  in  its  essence. 
They  ask  also  what  the  artist  does,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  in  order  to  make  a  work  of 
art  produce  its  legitimate  pleasurable  effect 
upon  the  aesthetic  sense.  Thus,  as  a  rule, 
they  continually  avoid  metaphysical  questions 
—  although  these  have  their  interest  —  and 
deal  with  more  or  less  concrete  phases  of 
their  subject. 

Let  us  now  apply  their  methods  to  what  we 
call  literary  art,  and  see  whether  we  shall  not 
obtain  more  tangible  results  than  we  should 
do  were  we  to  continue  to  endeavor  to  define 
literature.  We  may,  indeed,  find  before  we 
have  finished  that  literature  is  a  rather  com- 
plex art,  consisting  of  poetry  which  corre- 
sponds with  music  and  painting  and  sculpture, 
in  which  the  elements  of  use  and  often  of 
moral  and  intellectual  emotion  play  a  de- 
cidedly inferior  part  to  the  element  of  aesthetic 
emotion,  and  prose  which  holds  partly  by  the 
arts  named  above,  and  partly  by  architecture, 
in  which  the  element  of  use  enters  conspicu- 
ously. The  complex  character  of  our  art 
150 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

need  not,  however,  render  our  method  of 
treatment  particularly  difficult  or  in  any  way 
unserviceable,  nor  need  the  fact  that  intellec- 
tual and  moral  emotions  of  a  pleasurable  kind 
often  predominate  over  aesthetic  emotions  in 
prose  and,  for  some  minds,  even  in  poetry, 
hinder  us  from  regarding  literature  as  the 
product  of  an  art,  since  the  sine  qua  non  of 
all  art  —  viz.,  an  appeal  to  the  aesthetic  sense 
—  will  be  found  to  exist  in  all  literature  that 
good  critics  have  been  agreed  in  considering 
worthy  of  attention,  and  since  the  element  of 
pleasure,  on  the  part  both  of  creator  and  of 
recipient,  continually  abides. 


II 


IN  pursuance  of  our  plan  of  treatment  let 
us  now  examine  the  following  statement, 
which  has  resulted  from  a  considerable  analy- 
sis of  the  problem  we  have  just  been  discuss- 
ing, and  see  if  it  will  help  us  appreciably : 
In  order  to  produce  literature  or  to  practise 
the  art  of  literature  a  writer  must  record  not 
merely  his  thought  or  his  knowledge  or  both, 
but  also  express  his  sustained  aesthetic,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  emotions  in  such  a  way  as 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

to   awaken   in   a    sustained    manner  similar 
emotions  in  others. 

We  shall  do  well  to  explain  by  means  of 
an  example.  An  important  historical  event 
happens  —  a  fictitious  event  would  serve  our 
purpose  just  as  well  —  and  a  man  knowing 
the  facts  about  it  writes  them  down.  This 
man,  no  matter  who  he  may  be,  even  a  me- 
diaeval monk,  will  probably  have  emotions, 
aesthetic,  intellectual,  and  moral,  connected 
with  the  event  he  records ;  but  unless  he  has 
the  power,  conscious  or  unconscious,  to  give 
these  emotions  expression  in  his  record,  what 
he  writes  will  not  be  literature  in  any  true 
sense.  He  will  not  write  history,  but  annals  of 
an  unliterary  kind.  Yet  this  man,  though  he 
may  not  be  capable  of  an  original  thought, 
may,  nevertheless,  if  he  has  power  to  fuse  his 
knowledge  and  accompanying  emotions, 
produce  something  that  is  truly  literary  in 
character.  He  does  not  write  history  as  yet, 
but  he  does  write  picturesque  and  entertain- 
ing annals.  If  now  to  knowledge  and  emo- 
tions he  adds  thought,  if  he  traces  effects  to 
their  causes  and  draws  conclusions,  if  his 
thought  be  truly  original  and  philosophical, 
he  has  done  all  that  he  can  do  in  a  literary 
way  for  the  actual  event,  he  has  written  his- 
tory in  its  highest  and  truest  sense.  If,  how- 
152 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

ever,  our  hypothetical  writer,  with  his 
abundant  knowledge  and  his  philosophical 
powers  of  thought,  had  been  either  capable 
of  no  emotions,  an  improbable  supposition, 
or  destitute  of  the  power  of  expressing  them, 
he  would  most  certainly  not  have  produced 
a  literary  work.  He  would,  perhaps,  have 
made  a  contribution  to  the  philosophy  of 
history,  but  not  to  history  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  student  of  literature  applies  that 
noble  term.  Furthermore,  if  our  writer's 
emotions,  or  his  power  of  expressing  them, 
had  been  merely  momentary  or  intermittent, 
and  not  fairly  sustained,  he  would  have  writ- 
ten something  that  could  not,  as  a  whole, 
have  been  called  literature,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  literary  fragments  might  have  been  em- 
bedded in  it.  The  same  thing  is  true  when 
several  writers  of  varying  powers  join  to  pro- 
duce a  common  work,  as  for  example  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  which  contains 
literature,  but  is  not  itself,  as  a  whole,  litera- 
ture at  all. 

Finally,  our  would-be  historian  or  pictur- 
esque annalist  must  possess  not  merely 
adequate  knowledge,  with  or  without  original 
thought,  and  emotions  which  he  can  express 
so  as  to  relieve  his  tension  of  soul ;  he  must 
possess  also  the  power  of  so  expressing  his 
153 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

emotions  as  to  make  others  feel  them.  A 
sustained  and,  so  to  speak,  contagious  ex- 
pression of  emotion,  which  must  be  partly 
aesthetic  in  character,  is  the  indispensable 
condition  to  every  piece  of  writing  that  has 
any  claims  to  be  considered  as  literature,  if 
literature  be  regarded  as  the  product  of  an 
art.  It  sometimes  happens  that  a  man  pos- 
sessing adequate  knowledge,  original  thought, 
and  vivid  emotions,  which  are  not  correlated 
by  that  faculty,  of  which  we  shall  speak  here- 
after, known  as  the  imagination,  expresses 
himself  in  a  way  presumably  sufficient  to 
relieve  his  own  pent-up  feelings,  but  not  in  a 
way  capable  of  appreciably  communicating 
these  feelings  to  others.1  Such  a  man,  we 
say,  lacks  literary  or,  as  some  would  put  it, 
stylistic  or  imaginative  capacity,  and  as  a 
consequence  his  book,  if  it  survive  at  all,  lives 
only  for  special  students.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances we  are  immediately  led  to  ask 
(putting  aside  the  consideration  of  those 
writers  who  deal  chiefly  with  thought  and 
emotion  apart  from  external  knowledge  — 
that  is,  philosophers  of  a  literary  turn)  if  there 

1  It  is  probably  by  some  such  reasoning  that  we  must 
explain  the  existence  among  us  of  a  large  number  of  would- 
be  authors  who  are  unsuccessful  in  spite  of  many  good 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart. 

154 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

is  any  medium  of  expression  by  the  use  of 
which  a  writer  of  ability  can  always  relieve 
his  own  surcharged  emotions,  and  at  the  same 
time  surely  communicate  them  to  others. 

There  must  be  such  a  medium  of  expres- 
sion, or  literature  in  our  sense  of  the  term 
cannot  exist;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  sus- 
tained and  contagious  expression  of  emotion 
is  what  serves  to  distinguish  the  writings  of 
the  mere  knower  and  thinker  from  those  of 
the  literary  man  or  artist  proper.  We  cannot 
say  that  the  possession  and  use  of  such  a 
medium  of  expression  is  the  sole  requisite 
of  the  true  man  of  letters,  for  a  modicum  of 
thought  and,  in  a  sense,  of  knowledge  also, 
or  what  we  may  term  a  "  carrying  statement " 
is  necessary  to  every  literary  work,  since  the 
power  of  expressing  emotion  pure  and  simple 
is  assigned  to  the  other  fine  arts  like  music 
and  painting,  which  cannot  present  thought 
at  all,  but  only  suggestions  to  thought.  Yet 
it  is  perfectly  true  to  say  that  with  the  posses- 
sion and  use  of  a  highly  developed  medium 
for  the  expression  and  communication  of  his 
emotions  a  writer  can  produce  vital  literature 
almost  without  thinking  a  tangible  thought 
or  recording  a  thing  worth  knowing.  Foe's 
Ulalume  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  truth  of 
this  statement.  But  it  is  time  to  endeavor  to 
155 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

determine  what  our  desiderated    medium  of 
expression  is  in  its  essence.1 

1  It  has  been  assumed  throughout  the  above  discussion 
that  the  artist  consciously  or  unconsciously  communicates 
his  emotions  to  us  through  the  medium  of  his  art  product ; 
but  this  assumption  will  not  win  full  assent  until  we  exam- 
ine what  is  meant  by  a  phrase  constantly  used  by  critics 
—  to  wit,  "  impersonal  art."  Perhaps  some  citations  from 
Mr.  Bernhard  Berenson  will  enable  us  to  indicate  the  na- 
ture of  the  problem.  "  Velasquez,  who  painted  without 
ever  betraying  an  emotion,"  is  the  first;  the  second  is 
longer  and  runs  as  follows :  "  If  a  given  situation  in  life, 
a  certain  aspect  of  landscape,  produces  an  impression  upon 
the  artist,  what  must  he  do  to  make  us  feel  it  as  he  felt  it  ? 
There  is  one  thing  he  must  not  do,  and  that  is  to  reproduce 
his  own  feeling  about  it.  That  may  or  may  not  be  interest- 
ing, may  or  may  not  be  artistic ;  but  one  thing  it  certainly 
cannot  do,  it  cannot  produce  upon  us  the  effect  of  the 
original  situation  in  life  or  the  original  aspect  of  the  land- 
scape ;  for  the  feeling  is  not  the  original  phenomenon  itself, 
but  the  phenomenon,  to  say  the  least,  as  refracted  by  the 
personality  of  the  artist,  and  this  personal  feeling,  being 
another  thing,  must  needs  produce  another  effect."  (The 
Central  Italian  Painters  of  the  Renaissance,  pp.  70,  71.) 

We  may  note  that  there  is  nothing  here  that  interferes 
with  the  idea  that  the  artist  experiences  emotions  in  con- 
nection with  some  external  phenomenon,  which  emotions 
he  wishes  us  to  realize.  We  note,  further,  that  no  ques- 
tion is  raised  with  regard  to  subjective  art  proper,  such  as 
that  of  the  lyric  poet  whose  feeling  is  often  the  real  thing 
to  be  described  rather  than  the  external  phenomenon  that 
has  occasioned  the  feeling.  The  whole  question  is  plainly 
one  of  method.  Mr.  Berenson  holds  that  the  great  artist 
will  strive  to  avoid  the  effects  of  the  "  personal  equation," 
much  as  a  scientist  will,  and  in  the  highest  ranges  of  objec- 
tive art  this  is  true.  The  dramas  of  Shakspere,  for  exam- 
I56 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 


III 


THAT  it  consists  primarily  of  words  goes 
without  saying.  Thought  and  knowledge,  if 

pie,  are  in  the  main  impersonal.  But  while  it  is  correct, 
from  one  point  of  view,  to  affirm  that  Velasquez  painted 
and  Shakspere  wrote  without  betraying  an  emotion,  it  is 
hardly  correct  to  say  that  either  painted  or  wrote  without 
more  or  less  consciously  intending  to  communicate  to 
others  certain  emotional  states  which  the  mere  reproduc- 
tion of  the  external  phenomenon  could  not  be  relied  on  to 
convey.  Mere  reproduction  is  photography,  and  neither 
Velasquez  nor  Shakspere  was  a  photographer.  Certain 
emotional  states,  such  as  those  of  exaltation,  of  admira- 
tion, of  contempt,  must,  it  would  seem,  actually  charac- 
terize the  artist  while  he  is  producing.  He  cannot  be  a 
mere  lens ;  he  must  be  inspired.  But  when  he  is  inspired 
he  is  out  of  himself,  and  hence  is  impersonal,  although 
really  in  a  state  of  exaltation  which  he  is  trying  to  repro- 
duce in  us.  He  is  not  conscious,  perhaps,  of  his  endeavor, 
certainly  not  in  a  personal  and  selfish  way ;  but  for  the 
convenience  of  our  analysis  we  may  assume  that  what  he 
does  is  actually  to  try  to  make  us  feel  something.  He 
would  not  paint  or  write  if  this  were  not  his  motive,  yet 
he  may  have  this  motive  and  be  as  much  out  of  himself  as 
a  thoroughly  spiritual  man  is  when  he  performs  some  act 
of  heroic  self-abnegation.  But  the  experience  of  sustained 
emotions  and  the  inspired,  unselfish  impulse  to  stir  such 
emotions  in  others  in  connection  with  the  exciting  phe- 
nomenon seem  to  be  the  basal  facts  in  all  art  creation ;  and 
if  the  artist  really  paints  or  writes  without  betraying  an 
emotion,  it  is  because  he  is  great  enough  to  prevent  his 
brush  or  pen  from  expressing  any  single  characteristically 
personal  emotion  which  he  perceives  would  introduce  a 

157 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

they  are  to  serve  any  definite  purpose, 
must  be  presented  to  us  in  more  or  less  con- 
disturbing  element  of  self,  a  result  which  experience  has 
told  him  would  be  dangerous ;  or  else  it  is  because  he  is 
in  that  condition  of  creative  exaltation  which  the  Greeks 
attributed  to  their  poets  and  which  Matthew  Arnold  had 
in  mind  when  he  said  that  it  seemed  as  if  Nature  some- 
times took  the  pen  out  of  Wordsworth's  hand  and  wrote 
for  him.  We  may  rest  assured,  therefore,  that  the  theory 
of  the  emotional  basis  of  all  art  and  of  the  communication  of 
the  artist's  emotions  to  spectator  or  reader  is  not  really  af- 
fected by  anything  that  can  be  said  about  the  nature  and 
value  of  impersonal  art.  Emotions,  or  at  least  an  emotional 
state,  can  be  communicated  in  an  impersonal,  unconscious 
way  in  art  as  well  as  in  conduct.  We  may  conclude  this 
lengthy  side  discussion  by  a  brief  consideration  of  what 
ought  to  be  the  most  impersonal  of  all  art  attitudes,  if  we 
may  so  speak  :  that  of  the  portrait-painter.  Here  the  artist 
should  surely  strive  to  reproduce  the  sitter  in  the  most 
faithful  way  on  canvas  ;  in  other  words,  he  ought  not  to 
let  us  suspect  the  existence  of  the  "personal  equation." 
But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  if  the  sitter  excited  a  state  of 
emotional  contempt  in  the  artist  this  contempt  would  not 
inevitably  be  communicated  through  the  picture  to  the 
beholder.  So  a  great  painter  having  a  hero  to  paint  for 
whom  he  felt  admiration  would  almost  inevitably  transmit 
that  admiration.  Friendship,  indifference,  every  emotional 
state,  seems  to  get  itself  transferred  to  canvas ;  or  else,  if 
these  moral  emotions  are  absent,  there  are  aesthetic  emo- 
tions connected  with  movement  and  what  the  critics  call 
"  tactile  values  "  which  in  the  main  occupy  the  artist  and 
are  transmitted  to  us.  Perhaps  the  best  portraits,  techni- 
cally speaking,  are  those  in  which  aesthetic  emotions  like 
these  have  dominated  the  artist,  but  it  is  hard  for  some  of 
us  to  feel  that  in  the  case  of  the  noble  portraits  by  Raphael 
to  be  seen  in  the  great  Florentine  double  gallery  there  was 
I58 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

nected  wholes,  and  this  is  done  among  all 
civilized  peoples  only  through  the  use  of 
words,  spoken  or  written.  The  emotions  of 
the  man  who  seeks  literary  utterance  must, 
as  we  have  seen,  attach  themselves  to  at  least 
a  modicum  of  thought  and  knowledge,  to  a 
carrying  statement;  hence  these  emotions,  to 
have  literary  value,  must  be  expressed  in 
words.  A  series  of  twenty  piercing  cries 
would  express  profound  emotion,  but  would 
not  be  in  the  least  sense  literary  in  character.1 
Our  medium,  then,  must  consist  of  words 
spoken  or  written.  But  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses literature  must  be  something  recorded, 
something  preserved,  that  can  be  enjoyed  and 
re-enjoyed.  Before  the  days  of  writing  and 
printing  literature  was  remembered,  not 
recorded ;  but  nowadays  we  record,  and 
do  not  try  to  remember.  The  spoken 
word  practically  perishes,  therefore,  and 
need  not  be  considered  as  literature  in  any 
strict  sense,  since  the  phonograph  has  not 
been  yet  put  to  serious  use.  Hence  orators 

not  some  strong  moral  emotion  continually  affecting  the 
earnest  painter  as  he  toiled  away  upon  his  task  of  giving 
life  to  his  canvases  and  pleasure  tempered  with  moral  awe 
to  us  who  now  behold  his  handiwork. 

1  Such  a  series  might  be  used  in  a  piece  of  literature 
with  considerable  effect.  I  have  an  impression  that  one  is 
to  be  found  in  the  Philoctetes. 

159 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

whose  words  are  not  reported,  which  is 
naturally  rare  at  present,  are  literary  men  who 
do  not  produce  literature.  Our  medium  con- 
sists, therefore,  of  recorded  words,  and  nowa- 
days of  written  or  printed  words  couched  in 
alphabetical  symbols.  Literature  might,  of 
course,  be  presented  in  symbols  other  than 
alphabetical,  but  this  fact  does  not  affect  our 
analysis.  These  recorded  or  —  let  us  say 
hereafter  —  written  words,  as  they  must  con- 
vey a  modicum  of  thought  and  knowledge,  a 
carrying  statement,  should  be  arranged  ac- 
cording to  the  laws  of  syntax,  and,  indeed,  in 
order  that  they  may  produce  a  uniform  and 
ascertainable  impression,  should  be  used  in 
accordance  with  all  the  normal  laws  of  gram- 
mar and  rhetoric,  so  far  as  the  latter  study  is 
concerned  with  intelligibility,  unless,  indeed, 
we  wish  to  produce  certain  legitimate  effects 
of  illusion  through  the  use  of  an  illiterate 
dialect.  This  is  but  to  say  that  our  words 
should  be  grouped  properly  into  phrases, 
clauses,  sentences,  and  paragraphs ;  that 
grammar  and  rhetoric  are  sciences  that  un- 
derlie literature.  There  is  also  another  under- 
lying science  —  viz.,  logic.  It  is  plain  that 
our  words  grammatically  and  rhetorically 
grouped,  since  they  are  to  convey  thought 
and  knowledge,  cannot  make  obvious  non- 
160 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

sense.  If  in  any  way  they  cause  the  mind  to 
go  through  reasoning  processes,  they  should 
guide  correctly,  and  not  perplex  or  nonplus 
the  reader's  intellect.  On  the  same  principle 
our  grouped  words  must  be  true  to  all  such 
facts  of  experience  as  are  essential  to  the  valid- 
ity of  the  thought  and  knowledge  to  be  con- 
veyed. Such  a  group  of  words  as  "  giant  scrub 
oaks  "  could  be  admitted  into  a  literary  work 
only  when  some  special  reason,  such  as  an 
attempt  at  humor,  justified  the  combination. 

We  see,  then,  that  our  written  words  must 
be  arranged  and  governed  in  the  manner  in- 
dicated above;  in  other  terms,  our  medium 
of  expression  must  consist  of  written  words 
that  are  not  incongruous.  It  is  at  once 
obvious  that  such  words  ought  to  be  suffi- 
cient to  convey  all  the  thought  and  knowledge 
that  we  can  ever  have  to  express  under  normal 
circumstances.  We  need  only  inquire,  there- 
fore, how  written  words  that  make  sense  can 
be  made  to  receive  sustained  emotions  of  a 
pleasurable  sort,  and  to  communicate  them  to 
the  reader.  This  can  be  accomplished  first 
by  imparting  to  one's  words  adequate  rhythm 
and  euphony  and  harmony;  secondly,  by 
using  in  addition  words  that  connote  things 
and  ideas,  the  suggestion  of  which  will  call 
up  in  the  reader  emotions  which  are  not 
11  161 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

strained,  and  in  which  the  element  of  pleasure 
on  the  whole  predominates  over  that  of  pain. 
It  follows,  if  what  has  just  been  stated  be  true, 
that  our  medium  of  expression  must  consist 
of  written  words  specially  chosen  and  specially 
arranged,  and  that  the  essential  problem 
before  every  would-be  literary  man,  after  he 
has  mastered  the  rules  of  grammar,  of  rhet- 
oric, so  far  as  they  relate  to  intelligibility, 
and  of  logic,  and  has  obtained  sufficient 
thought  and  knowledge  to  serve  as  a  basis  or 
a  carrying  statement  for  the  emotions  he 
would  impart,  is  concerned  with  the  choice 
of  emotive  words  and  their  rhythmical,  eu- 
phonious, and  harmonious  arrangement.  The 
more  valuable  the  thought  and  knowledge  he 
can  contrive  to  convey  with  these  emotive 
and  attractively  arranged  words  the  more 
important  in  all  cases  his  literary  work  will 
be ;  but  he  is  none  the  less  primarily  con- 
cerned with  the  choice  and  arrangement  of 
words  —  that  is  to  say,  he  must,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  apply  all  the  principles  of 
rhetoric,  including  poetics,  that  do  not  relate 
specifically  to  mere  intelligibility.  Now  let  us 
endeavor  to  obtain  some  adequate  information 
upon  these  important  matters  of  the  arrange- 
ment and  the  choice  of  written  words  neces- 
sary to  the  production  of  real  literature. 
162 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 


IV 


WORDS  in  a  truly  literary  composition  are 
arranged  rhythmically  because,  as  psychology 
teaches  us,  it  is  a  law  of  our  nature  for  our 
emotions  to  express  themselves  rhythmically 
and  to  be  excited  by  rhythm.  Rhythm,  from 
a  Greek  word  that  means  "  flowing,"  is 
"  movement  in  time  characterized  by  equality 
of  measures  and  by  alternation  of  tension 
(stress)  and  relaxation."  It  is  represented 
in  nature  by  the  beating  of  the  heart,  by  the 
movement  of  waves,  by  the  swaying  of  leaves. 
In  speech  it  is  represented  by  the  succession 
of  emphatic  and  unemphatic  syllables,  which 
delights  the  ear  just  as  the  rhythmical  sway- 
ing of  a  blade  of  grass  delights  the  eye. 
There  is,  of  course,  some  sort  of  rhythm  in 
all  speech  —  a  fact  which  unites  this  noble 
capacity  of  man  with  the  universal  life  of 
nature  — for  all  life  seems  to  be  based  on 
motion,  in  which  rhythm  could  invariably  be 
discovered  if  we  only  had  the  proper  organs 
of  apprehension.  But  the  rhythm  latent  in 
conversation  and  in  the  written  style  —  writ- 
ten words  sounded  to  the  inner  ear  yield 
rhythm  —  of  men  who  have  no  great  power 
163 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

of  translating  their  emotions  into  language  is 
practically  unrecognizable  for  the  most  part ; 
hence  it  is  that  conversation,  unless  it  concern 
some  exciting  topic,  pleasant  or  unpleasant, 
or  be  conducted  by  a  master  of  the  art,  fails,  as 
a  rule,  to  appeal  profoundly  to  our  emotions, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  the  majority  of  the 
books  that  are  written.  When,  however,  the 
emotions  of  an  author  are  really  excited,  he 
tends  to  arrange  his  words  in  such  a  way  that 
they  either  suggest  a  rhythm  that  stimulates 
the  emotions  of  others  or  else  fall  into  an  un- 
mistakable rhythm  which  can  be  measured 
accurately.  In  the  former  case  he  composes 
what  we  call  normally  literary  prose ;  in  the 
latter  case  he  composes  something  in  meas- 
ured rhythm,  or  metre,  which  we  call  usually 
poetry.  These  two  divisions  exhaust  litera- 
ture between  them.1 

1  There  is  no  need  to  discuss  at  any  length  the  time- 
worn  question  whether  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  poetry 
not  couched  in  metrical  language.  According  to  the  terms 
of  our  description  of  literature,  all  the  essential  features  of 
literary  production  will  be  found  in  every  piece  of  true 
prose  and  verse;  the  line  of  demarcation  furnished  by 
measurement  of  rhythm  is,  therefore,  essential  only  in  the 
determination  of  questions  relative  to  degree  of  emotional 
pleasure  excited,  not  to  kind.  It  seems  to  be  clear,  from 
the  data  of  general  experience,  that  the  emotional  pleasure 
resulting  from  the  use  of  measured  rhythm  is,  all  other 
things  being  equal,  and  the  subject  or  carrying  statement 
164 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  while  there  is  a 
specific  line  of  demarcation  —  viz.,  the  pos- 
sibility of  measurement  of  rhythm  — between 
literary  prose  and  poetry,  there  is  none,  so 
far  as  rhythm  is  concerned,  between  literary 
prose  and  prose  that  is  not  literary.  But 
the  absence  of  a  line  of  strict  demarcation 
proves  no  more  in  this  case  than  it  does  in 
the  case  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  king- 
doms. There  are  forms  of  life,  like  sponges, 
that  seem  or  once  seemed  to  belong  to  either 
kingdom  or  to  both;  so  there  are  kinds  of 
prose  about  which  it  might  be  impossible  to 
decide  fully  whether  they  belong  to  the  cate- 
gory of  literary  prose  or  not.  But  above 
and  below  sponges  we  get  unmistakable  ani- 
mals and  plants,  and  so  above  and  below  the 
dubious  varieties  of  prose  mentioned  we  get 
prose  that  is  plainly  literary  and  the  reverse 
—  the  assumption  being  made,  of  course, 
that  with  the  majority  of  educated  readers, 

being  capable  of  sustaining  the  more  intense  emotional 
force  resulting  from  the  use  of  measured  rhythm,  greater 
than  that  consequent  upon  the  employment  of  unmeasured 
rhythm ;  hence  it  is  advisable  to  insist  firmly  on  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  literature  couched  in  measured  rhythm 
which  we  call  by  convention  poetry,  and  a  literature 
couched  in  unmeasured  rhythm  which  we  call  by  convention 
prose.  The  names  are  thus  seen  to  be  conventional,  but 
the  varieties  of  literature  that  they  represent  are  distinct 
in  one  important  particular.  See  note  i,  page  170. 
I65 


THE   NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

or  else  with  the  body  of  critics,  the  power 
resides  of  speaking  more  or  less  authorita- 
tively on  such  points.  If  now  what  has  just 
been  said  be  true,  it  follows  that  literature  in 
prose  must  be  characterized  by  an  adequate 
rhythm.  The  amount  and  character  of  this 
rhythm  need  not  occupy  us  here,  although  it 
should  be  noted  that  some  critics  have  denied 
that  rhythm  is  necessary  to  literary  prose. 
What  does  concern  us  is  simply  the  fact  that 
rhythm,  being  the  language  of  the  emotions, 
is  naturally  employed  in  literature,  the  chief  pur- 
pose of  which  is  to  embody  these,  and  that, 
therefore,  our  would-be  writer  of  literature 
must  consciously  or  unconsciously  employ 
rhythm  whether  he  write  in  prose  or  verse. 
With  regard  to  the  euphonious  arrange- 
ment of  words,  it  may  be  observed  that  this, 
while  not  of  such  prime  necessity  as  rhythmic 
arrangement,  is  nevertheless  necessary  in  a 
secondary  sense  to  all  real  literature,  whether 
prose  or  poetry.  Euphony,  which  is  Greek 
for  "  having  a  good  voice,"  implies  a  dis- 
tinctly pleasant  arrangement  of  sounds  in 
composition,  and  when  we  say  that  words 
in  true  literature  should  be  arranged  euphoni- 
ously we  mean  merely  that  care  should  be 
taken  not  to  let  the  combination  of  sounds 
made  by  the  words  we  use  offend  the  outer 
166 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

or  the  inner  ear  by  their  dissonance  or  fre- 
quent repetition.  The  waves  caused  by  cer- 
tain combinations  of  sounds  produce  physical 
effects  upon  the  auditory  nerves  that  are 
translated  into  unpleasant  emotions  on  the 
part  of  the  reader  —  for  example,  this  effect 
is  produced  by  an  undue  succession  of  s's  as 
well  as  by  the  monotonous  repetition  of 
single  words,  phrases,  or  clauses,  the  sound 
or  sound-combinations  of  which  might  not 
have  been  unpleasant  when  experienced 
singly.  But  unpleasant  feelings  or  emotions 
on  the  part  of  the  reader  obviously  interfere 
with  the  transmission  to  him  of  the  pleasant 
emotions  of  which  the  literary  product  is 
intended  to  be  the  medium.  Hence  the 
necessity  of  a  euphonious  arrangement  of 
words  is  apparent. 

With  regard  to  the  necessity  of  a  harmoni- 
ous arrangement  of  words  we  can  afford  to 
be  equally  brief.  Harmony,  strictly  speak- 
ing, refers  to  the  adaptation  of  sound  to 
sense,  and  is  not  required  by  the  ear  to  any- 
thing like  the  same  extent  as  rhythm  and 
euphony.  Still  it  has  at  times  a  distinct  part 
to  play  in  affecting  the  emotions  of  a  reader, 
and  is  more  or  less  to  be  found  in  all  good 
literary  work.  And  akin  to  harmony  in 
sound  is  what  we  may  call  a  mental  harmony 
167 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

that  should  attach  to  a  truly  literary  arrange- 
ment of  words.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that 
there  is  a  mental  pleasure  that  results  from 
the  harmonious,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  best 
to  say  symmetrical,  arrangement  of  the  words 
and  combinations  of  words  that  we  employ 
which  is  analogous  to  the  pleasure  the  eye 
obtains  from  the  contemplation  of  symmetry 
in  figures.  A  felicitous  balanced  or  periodic 
sentence  carries  with  it  a  charm  of  symmetry 
that  gives  pleasure  to  the  cultivated  and 
often  to  the  uncultivated  reader,  and  so  en- 
hances the  emotive  value  of  the  writing  in 
which  it  is  found.  It  cannot  be  doubted, 
also,  that  the  attainment  of  symmetry  in  our 
arrangement  of  words  often  enhances  their 
euphony  in  a  subtle  manner  and  helps  us  to 
attain  that  adequate  rhythm  which  is  neces- 
sary to  literary  prose.  Aristotle  long  ago 
pointed  out  that  the  period  gave  a  sort  of 
framework  to  the  rhythm,  helping  it,  prob- 
ably, much  as  the  blank  verse  period  helps 
that  subtle  metre,  but  we  need  not  enlarge 
on  this  here.  It  is  sufficient  for  us  to  per- 
ceive in  a  general  way  why  a  rhythmical, 
euphonious,  harmonious,  and,  we  may  add 
perhaps,  symmetrical  arrangement  of  words 
is  a  natural  medium  for  the  expression  and 
communication  of  emotions. 
1 68 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 


V 


WE  come  now  to  the  second  of  our  methods 
for  enabling  written  words  to  convey  emo- 
tion —  to  wit,  the  choice  of  such  words  as 
connote  an  adequate  number  of  ideas  and 
things,  the  suggestion  of  which  will  call  up 
in  the  reader  emotions  which  are  not  over- 
tense  and  in  which  the  element  of  pleasure 
predominates  on  the  whole  over  that  of  pain.1 
It  might  seem  at  first  sight  as  if  such  choice 
of  emotive  words  would  be  of  itself  sufficient 

1  It  is  obvious  that  pleasure  must  predominate  over 
pain  in  the  emotive  effects  of  a  work  of  art,  or  the  latter 
would  fail  to  accomplish  the  purpose  for  which  all  the 
arts  exist.  Even  where  the  object  represented  is  in 
itself  one  that,  if  fully  realized  in  actual  life,  would  cause 
us  intensely  painful  emotions,  thoroughly  artistic  repre- 
sentation will  give  us  emotions  on  the  whole  pleasurable. 
This  truth  is  illustrated  in  tragedy  where  the  individual 
pity  and  fear  of  the  spectator  are  made  universalized 
emotions  through  the  art  of  the  poet,  and  are  thus  purged 
of  grosser  elements,  with  the  result  that  the  sympathetic 
nature  receives  an  emotional  relief  that  is  distinctly  pleas- 
ing. (See  with  regard  to  this  "  purging  "  the  KdOapvts  of 
Aristotle,  Butcher's  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry  and 
the  Fine  Arts,  page  225.)  Sometimes  what  would  be 
unpleasantly  disgusting  in  actual  life  receives  in  art  a 
representation  that  is  humorous  and  provokes  pleasant 
smiles,  as  is  illustrated  by  a  well-known  picture  by  Rubens 
in  the  Uffizi  gallery. 

169 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

to  express  and  convey  emotions,  and  so  to 
constitute  literature,  that  literature  is  after  all, 
merely  a  matter  of  diction.  A  moment's 
reflection  will  enable  us,  however,  to  see  that 
this  is  not  so,  since  rhythm  is  in  some  way 
essential  to  the  utterance  of  emotions  and,  if 
not  adequately  present,  is  missed  with  the 
result  that  the  composition  is  partly  displeas- 
ing, and  since  lack  of  euphony  and  harmony 
would  in  almost  every  case  take  away  so 
much  from  the  effects  of  the  emotive  terms 
used  that  the  reader  would  experience  sen- 
sations the  reverse  of  pleasing.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  possible  for  words  rhythmically, 
euphoniously,  and  harmoniously  arranged 
to  give  pleasure  without  the  presence  of  a 
single  recognizably  emotive  word  —  a  pleas- 
ure sufficient  perhaps  to  assure  a  reader  that 
he  is  perusing  something  that  belongs  to 
literature.  This  can  be  proved  by  showing 
a  person  ignorant  of  Latin  how  to  read  aloud 
properly  some  of  Virgil's  lines.  He  will  in 
most  cases  feel  delighted  with  what  he  does 
not  understand,  and  will  be  ready  to  admit 
that  it  must  possess  high  literary  value,  and 
this  quite  apart  from  the  pleasant  effect  pro- 
duced, as  we  shall  see,  by  the  vague.1  It 

1  It  is  dubious  whether  doggerel  in  a  foreign  language, 
read  naturally,  would  produce  this  effect,  for  the  simple 
I/O 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

may  be  doubted,  however,  whether,  strictly 
speaking,  any  writer  has  ever  put  together  a 
considerable  number  of  words  in  a  really 
rhythmical,  euphonious,  and  harmonious 
manner  without  employing  emotive  terms. 

But  whether  or  not  emotive  words  are 
always  present  in  any  given  piece  of  truly 
literary  work,  it  is  easy  to  see  why  their  use 
is  more  or  less  necessary.  There  are  many 
things  and  ideas  about  which  we  have  emo- 
tions stored  up.  The  words  that  represent 
these  things  and  ideas  act  very  much  as  the 
electric  spark  that  discharges  a  heap  of 
powder.  The  moment  we  hear  them,  our 
stored-up  emotions  explode,  as  it  were,  and 
we  are  aglow  with  delight.  For  example,  in 
the  splendid  lines  of  Keats, 

Charmed  magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  faery-lands  forlorn, 

reason  that  doggerel  does  not  carry  emotion  with  it,  and 
when  read  aloud  to  a  person  ignorant  of  the  language 
would  not  be  likely  to  affect  him  pleasantly  unless  the 
reader  threw  unwarranted  emotion  into  his  reading.  We 
may  notice  in  this  connection  that  doggerel  does  not  come 
under  our  description  of  literature,  and  thus  is  not  poetry, 
although  it  is  couched  in  metre,  either  because  it  contains 
no  emotive  words,  as  in  the  mnemonic  jingle,  "  Thirty 
days  hath  September,"  or  because  such  emotive  words 
and  their  metrical  setting  as  are  used  in  it  are  in  some 
way  incongruous  or  commonplace. 
I/I 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

every  epithet  and  practically  all  the  nouns 
will  be  found  to  call  up  emotions.  Think 
of  what  emotions,  dating  back  to  our  child- 
hood, the  word  "  faery-lands "  unlocks ! 
Even  the  unusual  spelling  has  an  emotional 
value.  There  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  emo- 
tive power  of  properly  chosen  and  arranged 
words ;  indeed,  a  mere  word  itself  that  is 
unfamiliar  and  euphonious  will  often  pro- 
duce emotions  which  former  experience  of 
the  vague  and  uncertain  has  stored  up  in  us. 
For  instance,  Milton's  line, 

Looks  toward  Namancos  and  Bayonets  hold, 

has  caused  special  emotions  of  pleasure  to 
many  people  chiefly  because  they  knew 
nothing  about  the  two  small  places  in  Spain 
which  have  been  identified  only  of  recent 
years  by  zealous  commentators.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  should  be  remarked  that  a 
new  word,  not  suggestive  of  the  vague  and 
not  specially  euphonious,  calls  up  naturally 
little  or  no  emotion  —  which  is  a  partial  ex- 
planation of  the  fact  that  as  our  vocabulary 
improves  so  does  our  literary  appreciation. 

But  we  have  perhaps   said  enough  about 

the  value  of  the   use  of  emotive  words   in 

literature,   and    it  remains   only   to    explain 

our   qualifying  remarks  about   the  necessity 

172 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

of  avoiding  a  strain  to  the  reader's  emotions 
and  a  predominance  of  pain  over  pleasure. 
Our  qualification  is  dependent,  of  course, 
on  the  fact  that  literature  in  our  sense  of 
the  term  is  one  of  the  fine  arts,  and  that, 
as  we  have  seen,  one  of  the  main  objects 
of  all  the  fine  arts  is  to  give  pleasure. 
We  are  secure  of  pleasure,  to  a  certain 
extent,  if  the  words  presented  to  us  are 
rhythmically,  euphoniously,  and  harmoni- 
ously arranged,  but  so  great  is  the  emotive 
force  of  words  that  it  may  happen  that  the 
mysterious  inner  self,  which  underlies  our 
emotions,  may  be  overstirred  or  strained  by 
the  discharge  of  too  powerful  or  of  painful 
emotions  previously  stored  up,  and  that  in 
consequence  the  pleasure  resulting  from  the 
perception  of  rhythm,  euphony,  and  har- 
mony may  be  neutralized  by  pain  caused 
by  overstressed  or  unsuitable  emotions,  or 
actually  drowned  therein.  It  is  just  here 
that  many  writers,  even  experienced  ones, 
are  liable  to  go  astray.  They  use  a  word 
which  to  them  connotes  pleasure,  and  find 
to  their  surprise  that  it  connotes  for  another 
only  what  is  disagreeable.  They  use  a  com- 
bination of  words  that  leaves  a  sense  of 
delicate  sweetness  with  them  and  with  some 
of  their  friends,  and  behold !  the  general 
173 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

public  has  only  the  sense  of  being  cloyed 
and  of  wonder  at  the  number  of  minor 
poets  continually  being  discovered  by 
enthusiastically  generous  critics. 


VI 


BUT  this  power  which  we  posit  of  using 
emotive  words  that  kindle  emotions  in  the 
reader,  what  is  it  but  another  way  of  nam- 
ing that  faculty  which  by  some  critics  under 
the  influence  of  the  Germans  and  of  Cole- 
ridge is  held  to  impart  the  determining 
characteristic  of  all  truly  literary  products  — 
the  faculty  of  the  creative  imagination? 
The  poet  or  prose  writer  who  possesses 
imagination  transforms  the  empirical  world 
into  an  ideal  world  of  images,  and  in  the 
process  finds  what  we  term  his  aesthetic  emo- 
tions pleasurably  excited.  His  intellectual 
and  moral  emotions,  to  use  our  former 
phraseology,  are  also  sympathetically  af- 
fected and  cannot  be  satisfied  (certainly  in 
the  case  of  the  moral  ones)  without  some 
effort  on  his  part  to  communicate  them  to 
other  people.  He  makes  use  at  once  of  the 
medium  of  expression  most  suitable  to  his 
174 


THE  NATURE  OF  LITERATURE 

purpose  —  viz.,  words  rhythmically,  eupho- 
niously, and  harmoniously  arranged,  his 
aesthetic  sense  directing  him  as  to  the  most 
fitting  rhythm  and  sound-sequences  that  he 
can  employ.  This  same  sense  or,  if  we 
prefer  so  to  term  it,  his  imagination  teaches 
him  also  what  words  have  most  power  to 
express  the  emotions  with  which  he  is  sur- 
charged. These  emotions  are  the  result  of 
his  transformation  of  the  actual  world  of 
experience  into  an  ideal  world  of  images, 
and  the  faculty  which  enabled  him  to  form 
mental  images  enables  him  also  to  find  emo- 
tive words  which  will  call  up  such  images 
in  the  minds  of  all  who  read  him,  provided 
they  too  are  gifted  with  imagination,  not 
indeed  necessarily  creative,  but  at  least  re- 
ceptive. Hence  it  is  that  in  all  highly  emo- 
tive literature,  such  as  poetry  and  oratory, 
the  words  used  tend,  either  singly  or  in 
combination,  to  be  representative  of  con- 
crete images,  or  at  least  to  suggest  such 
images  vividly — which  is  but  to  say  that 
figurative  language  is  essential  to  highly 
emotive  literature.  We  see,  therefore,  that 
our  preceding  analysis  of  the  nature  of  the 
medium  of  expression  employed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  literature  might  be  resumed  in 
the  single  statement  that  literature  consists 
175 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

of    words    chosen     and    arranged    by    the 
imaginative   faculty. 

There  is,  however,  one  other  point  to  be 
considered  before  we  can  regard  our  analysis 
as  fairly  complete.  Properly  chosen  and  ar- 
ranged emotive  words  will  give  us  literary 
pleasure  from  the  moment  we  begin  a  good 
poem  or  piece  of  prose,  but  an  additional 
pleasure  comes  to  us  as  we  progress  in  our 
reading  and  become  conscious  of  the  sym- 
metry of  the  parts  of  the  composition  and, 
finally,  of  its  unity  as  a  whole.  These  emo- 
tions, connected  with  symmetry  and  unity, 
are  very  complex,  and  seem  to  be  partly  aes- 
thetic, partly  intellectual,  partly  moral  in 
character.  The  perception  of  symmetry,  so 
far  as  the  quality  does  not  affect  the  rhythm, 
harmony,  and  euphony  of  the  composition, 
can  hardly  be  aesthetic,  but  is  rather  intel- 
lectual in  character,  since  neither  the  eye  nor 
the  ear,  the  two  channels  through  which  ex- 
citations to  aesthetic  pleasure  are  in  the  main 
received  from  the  outer  world,  is  affected,  but 
only  the  mind.  The  perception  of  unity  gives 
an  unmistakable  intellectual  pleasure,  but  this 
seems  to  disappear  when  the  whole  that  is 
imaged  by  the  imaginative  composition  — 
whether  it  be  an  action  or  a  character  or 
some  feature  of  external  nature  that  is  por- 
176 


THE   NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

trayed  —  is  realized  completely  for  what  it  is. 
Then,  according  as  our  sense  for  beauty  or 
our  sense  for  conduct  is  stirred,  the  pleasure 
consequent  upon  the  perception  of  unity  — 
that  is,  the  intellectual  emotion,  merges  into 
an  aesthetic  or  a  moral  emotion,  or,  perhaps, 
into  a  mixed  one,  if  such  a  thing  be  possible.1 
If  the  intellectual  pleasure  resulting  from  the 
perception  of  unity  be  thus  lost  in  the  aes- 
thetic pleasure  indicated  above,  it  follows 
that  the  aesthetic  emotions  which,  according 
to  our  analysis,  are  unloosed  by  the  reading 
of  a  truly  literary  composition  are  supple- 
mented by  a  varying  quantity  of  similar  emo- 
tions which  serve  to  crown  our  reading  with 
complete  success,2  and  which  may,  when  they 
have  somewhat  cooled,  excite  into  sympa- 
thetic action  moral  emotions  of  gratitude  to 

1  This  merging  of  one  emotion  into  another  is  sometimes 
accomplished  so  quickly  as  to  escape  observation,  but  per- 
haps takes  place  whenever  we  are  brought  in  contact  with 
any  work  of  art.     For  example,  in  contemplating  a  fine 
flower  piece  we  probably  have  an  instantaneous  perception 
of  the  unity  of  the  composition,  with  a  resulting  intellec- 
tual pleasure  which  passes  into  an  aesthetic  pleasure  con- 
sequent upon   imaginative    contact  with   something  that 
delights  the  eye,  and  which  may  become  powerful  once 
more  when  we  have  gazed  sufficiently. 

2  It    is    probably  this   concluding   stock    of    emotions 
that  is  chiefly  revitalized  when  we  remember  books  with 
pleasure. 

12 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

the  literary  artist  who  has  charmed  us  and  of 
thankfulness  to  the  Divine  Power  that  has 
bestowed  the  gift  of  creative  imagination 
upon  our  fellow  man  and  of  receptive  imagi- 
nation upon  ourselves.  Moral  emotions  of  a 
similar  kind  are  excited  also  by  the  intellec- 
tual emotions  that  come  to  us  during  our 
perusal  of  a  work  of  literature  through  our 
perception  of  symmetry  in  the  parts  of  the 
composition.  It  must  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, that  intellectual  and  moral  emotions 
connected  with  the  perception  of  symmetry 
and  unity  may  be  excited  in  us  by  works  not 
at  all  literary  in  character;  as,  for  example, 
by  a  process  of  mathematical  or  scientific 
reasoning.  Hence  we  infer  that  the  only  safe 
test  for  determining  whether  a  given  product 
is  literary  or  not  is  to  ascertain  whether  or 
not  it  affects  pleasurably  the  aesthetic  sense.1 

1  We  must  refrain,  for  lack  of  space,  from  discussing 
Schopenhauer's  suggestive  essay  on  Beauty  and  Interest 
in  Works  of  Art  further  than  to  say  that  if  we  agree  with 
him  in  regarding  "  beauty  as  an  affair  of  knowledge  "  that 
appeals  to  the  knowing  subject  because  it  is  always  con- 
nected with  the  idea,  while  interest,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
an  affair  of  the  will,  we  may  nevertheless  contend  that  the 
idea  of  beauty  is  inseparably  connected  with  emotions  to 
which  we  give  the  name  "  aesthetic,"  while  interest  is  con- 
nected with  emotions  either  of  intellectual  curiosity  or  of 
moral  sympathy  or  repulsion.  The  value  of  our  analysis 
remains,  therefore,  unaffected  by  Schopenhauer's  ingeni- 
I78 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

We  have  now  practically  obtained  the  de- 
scription of  literature  that  we  set  out  to  seek, 
and  we  perceive  that  each  one  of  its  compo- 
nent terms  may  be  made  a  test  to  determine 
by  its  presence  or  absence  whether  a  given 
product  is  literature  or  not.  We  have  found 
that  nothing  belongs  to  real  literature  unless 
it  consists  of  written  words  that  constitute  a 
carrying  statement  which  makes  sense,  ar- 
ranged rhythmically,  euphoniously,  and  har- 
moniously, and  so  chosen  as  to  connote  an 
adequate  number  of  ideas  and  things  the 
suggestion  of  which  will  call  up  in  the  reader 
sustained  emotions  which  do  not  produce 
undue  tension  and  in  which  the  element  of 
pleasure  predominates,  on  the  whole,  over 
that  of  pain.  Practically  every  term  of  this 
description  should  be  kept  in  our  minds,  so 
that  we  may  consciously  apply  it  as  a  test  to 
any  piece  of  writing  about  the  literary  char- 
acter of  which  we  are  in  doubt.  It  now 
behooves  us  to  endeavor  to  determine  what 
consequences  will  naturally  flow  from  the 

ous  discussion,  nor  is  it  affected  by  the  subtle  speculations 
of  Vernon  Lee  and  C.  Anstruther  Thompson  in  their  re- 
cent articles  in  the  Contemporary  Review  entitled  Beauty 
and  Ugliness,  articles  which,  whether  accepted  in  their 
entirety  or  not,  make  a  most  important  contribution  to 
that  theory  of  aesthetics  which  British  and  American  critics 
so  thoroughly  neglect,  to  the  detriment  of  their  work. 
1/9 


THE  NATURE  OF   LITERATURE 

stand   we   have   taken   with    regard    to   this 
vexed  question  of  the  nature  of  literature. 


VII 

ONE  or  two  consequences  have  been  already 
noted.  We  have  of  course  set  outside  the 
pale  of  literature  all  speech  that  is  not  re- 
corded, and  we  have  treated  similarly  all  the 
records  of  mere  knowledge  or  of  thought  or 
of  both.  We  have  insisted  on  the  presence 
of  sustained  aesthetic  emotions  in  the  writer, 
which  are  so  expressed  as  to  appeal  in  a 
sustained  and  pleasurable  manner  to  the  aes- 
thetic sense  of  the  reader.  This  is  but  to  say 
that  we  have  insisted  that  all  true  literature 
must  move  us  in  a  personal  way,  which  may 
be  intellectual  and  moral  in  character,  but 
must  also  be  aesthetic.  It  follows,  then,  that 
our  description  of  literature  will  transsect 
many  of  the  received  categories  of  prose ; 
for  all  true  poetry,  appealing  as  it  does  to 
the  aesthetic  emotions,  is  plainly  literature  by 
the  terms  of  our  analysis.  For  example,  we 
infer  that  there  are  biographies  which  are 
mere  material  for  the  historical  specialist, 
such  as  those  family  memoirs  so  popular  at 
present,  and  biographies  that  belong  to  per- 
180 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

manent  literature,  like  Boswell's  Johnson. 
Books  of  travel,  of  history,  and  of  criticism 
may  be  similarly  divided.  The  moment  we 
refuse  to  be  guided  by  subject-matter,  the 
moment  we  ask  primarily  what  a  book  does 
rather  than  what  it  is,  we  find  that  the 
number  of  books  contained  in  many  of  the 
categories  of  prose  shrivels  considerably. 

It  is,  however,  only  the  categories  that  do 
not  lend  themselves  especially  to  emotional 
exploitation  that  so  shrink.  Whenever  a 
category  of  prose  like  the  novel  naturally 
holds  by  the  emotions  we  find  that  our  tests 
are  really  more  liberal  than  those  applied  by 
most  critics.  We  ask  only  that  the  composi- 
tion to  be  judged  shall  consist  of  words 
sufficiently  well  chosen  and  arranged  to  pro- 
duce a  sustained  and  pleasurable  effect  upon 
the  aesthetic  sense,  positing  always,  of  course, 
that  the  composition  in  question  shall  con- 
form to  the  laws  of  grammar  and  logic,  and 
shall  be  so  far  true  to  nature  and  experience 
as  not  to  produce  intellectual  dissatisfaction 
sufficient  to  neutralize  the  desiderated  aesthetic 
excitation.1 

1  It  is  just  here,  of  course,  that  most  writers  of  fiction 
fail  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  readers  of  wide  experience 
and  culture,  while  pleasing  the  masses  who  are  without 
high  or  strict  standards. 

181 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

It  will  be  observed  that  we  here  ask  only 
for  certain  positive  qualities  of  feeling  and 
style,  and  for  not  much  positive  thought  or 
intellectual  power,  pure  and  simple,  and  that 
not  a  few  novelists  could  stand  our  tests; 
whereas,  very  few,  considering  the  vast  num- 
ber that  write,  stand  the  tests  applied  by 
most  critics  and  historians  of  literature. 
This  leads  us  to  consider  a  very  important 
question.  Are  not  our  tests  really  too  easy? 
Must  we  not  require,  besides  emotion,  a 
considerable  amount  of  positive  intellectual 
power  in  every  writer  whose  work  is  worthy 
to  be  called  literary?  We  have  already  fore- 
stalled these  questions,  and  partly  answered 
them,  by  citing  the  case  of  Poe's  Ulalume, 
and  we  might  fortify  ourselves  by  quoting 
much  from  M.  Victor  Hugo,  whom  some  of 
us  regard  as  the  greatest  poet  since  Goethe, 
and  from  Hugo's  English  admirer,  Mr.  Swin- 
burne. None  of  these  poets  has  ever  pro- 
duced anything  that  is  not  literary  in  a  very 
real  and  sometimes  a  very  high  sense ;  but 
they  have  all  been  capable  of  writing  a  good 
deal  of  undoubted  poetry  that  required  very 
little  exercise  of  the  strictly  intellectual 
powers  for  its  production.  Our  illustrations 
might  be  greatly  extended,  more  particularly 
of  course  in  the  field  of  poetry,  where  pure 
182 


THE  NATURE   OF   LITERATURE 

emotion  can  sustain  itself  better  than  in  prose 
without  what  we  may  call  intellectual  vitaliz- 
ing; but  we  have  said  enough  for  our  pur- 
pose. We  have  not,  however,  commented 
sufficiently  on  the  classes  of  persons  by 
whom  our  tests  should  be  applied,  and  when 
we  shall  have  done  this,  it  will  appear  at  a 
glance  that  we  have  really  obtained  elastic, 
rather  than  easy,  methods  of  determining 
what  literature  is  in  its  essence. 

It  will  be  obvious  enough  to  any  one  who 
has  followed  our  reasoning  closely,  that  when 
we  demand  that  all  compositions  which  con- 
sist of  words  so  chosen  and  arranged  as  to 
excite  sustained  and  pleasurable  aesthetic 
emotions  shall  be  denominated  literature, 
we  must  either  posit  some  typical  reader 
whose  aesthetic  sense  will  serve  as  a  standard, 
or  be  willing  to  admit  that  there  are  as  many 
grades  of  literature  as  there  are  varieties  and 
grades  of  the  aesthetic  sense  in  humanity. 
Bold  as  the  position  may  appear  to  be,  we 
are  willing  both  to  posit  this  and  to  admit 
this.  All  writings  that  have  satisfied  the 
critical  requirements  of  past  ages  and  the 
value  of  which  is  substantiated  by  the  con- 
servative academic  critics  of  the  present  day, 
may  be  fairly  said  to  satisfy  the  aesthetic  sense 
of  a  typical  reader  —  that  is,  of  a  man  whose 
183 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

tastes  are  catholic  and  properly  trained  by 
education  and  by  private  study  and  reflection. 
Every  critic,  except  the  extreme  impressionist 
perhaps,  practically  assumes  that  he  is  such  a 
typical  reader  when  he  judges  a  book ;  and 
when  the  majority  of  critics,  after  due  time 
has  been  allowed  for  the  elimination  of  purely 
personal  and  temporary  elements  of  criticism, 
agree  on  the  literary  character  of  the  work  in 
question,  it  may  reasonably  be  said  to  satisfy 
the  aesthetic  sense  of  a  typical  reader. 

On  the  other  hand  nothing  can  be  plainer 
than  that  there  are  various  grades  of  litera- 
ture appealing  to  all  classes  of  people  and 
that  the  rigid  critic  and  literary  historian 
need  not  be  frightened  at  the  fact.  For  their 
purposes  they  have  only  to  ascertain  the 
verdict  of  the  typical  reader  just  described, 
and  discuss  or  register  that.  This  is  practi- 
cally what  they  do  now,  and  they  need  not 
give  themselves  any  more  concern  about  the 
novels  of  Mr.  E.  P.  Roe  and  Miss  Marie 
Corelli  than  they  do  about  the  yellow-backed 
fiction  sold  on  our  railway  trains  or  the 
continued  stories  that  figure  in  the  sensational 
journals.  If,  however,  they  are  interested  in 
the  more  or  less  philosophical  aspects  of 
literary  study,  they  will  find  it  hard  to  refute 
the  claim  that  the  novels  of  Mr.  Roe  and 
184 


THE  NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

Miss  Corelli  are  popular  with  certain  readers 
for  practically  the  same  reasons  for  which  the 
novels  of  Scott,  Balzac,  Tolstor,  and  Mr. 
Howells  are  popular  with  readers  of  higher 
aesthetic  development  —  viz.,  that  they  make 
primarily  a  pleasurable  appeal  to  the  aesthetic 
emotions.  We  may  call  the  novels  of  the 
latter  writers  literature,  and  of  the  former 
writers  stuff,  if  we  choose ;  but  logically  we 
have  no  more  right  to  say  that  the  two 
classes  of  fiction  differ  generically  than  we 
have  to  say  that  the  inhabitants  of  Murray 
Hill  are  human  beings  and  those  of  the 
Bowery  mere  brutes.  We  find  it  necessary 
to  divide  mankind  into  social  classes,  and 
thus  for  purposes  of  criticism  and  education 
we  divide  literature  into  various  grades  and 
consider  only  the  higher  ones ;  but  this 
should  not  blind  us  to  the  unity  that  in  both 
cases  underlies  our  division.1 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  our  tests  are 
elastic  rather  than  too  easy,  and  we  shall 
bring  our  discussion  to  a  close  by  remarking 
that  by  making  free  use  of  our  elastic  tests 
we  shall  not  only  be  better  able  to  sympathize 
with  the  literary  tastes  of  people  of  inferior 

1  See  on  this  point  Mr.  Brander  Matthews'  valuable 
essay  On  Pleasing  the  Taste  of  the  Public,  in  his 
Aspects  of  Fiction. 

I85 


THE   NATURE   OF  LITERATURE 

culture,  and  so  be  able  to  help  them  to  rise  in 
the  scale  of  taste  and  intelligence,  but  also  be 
more  certain  to  comprehend  and  supply  the 
literary  needs  of  children,  whether  they  are 
our  own  or  else  are  confided  to  our  guidance. 
The  teaching  as  well  as  the  criticism  of  pure 
literature  will  be  greatly  improved  from  the 
moment  teachers  and  critics  pay  more  atten- 
tion to  the  emotive  than  to  the  intellectual 
qualities  of  literature,  from  the  moment  they 
begin  to  ask  what  literature  does  rather  than 
what  it  is. 


1 86 


V 
ON  TRANSLATING   HORACE 


187 


V 
ON    TRANSLATING    HORACE 

THAT  to  attempt  to  translate  Horace  is  to 
attempt  the  impossible  is  a  statement  that  has 
long  since  passed  into  a  proverb,  of  which 
no  one  makes  greater  use  than  the  Horatian 
translator  himself.  Perhaps  we  owe  to  this 
proverbial  impossibility  the  fact  that  the 
translator  of  Horace  is  always  with  us.  A 
living,  breathing  antinomy,  he  writes  a  modest 
preface,  then,  muttering  to  himself  "  nil  mor- 
talibus  ardui  est,"  he  tries  to  scale  very  heaven 
in  his  folly,  to  rush  blindly  "per  vetitum 
nefasr  But  because  he  has  loved  much, 
therefore  shall  much  be  forgiven  him.  If 
Horace  were  not  Horace,  his  translators  would 
be  more  successful,  but  surely  they  would 
be  fewer  in  number.  To  love  Horace  pas- 
sionately and  not  try  to  translate  him  would 
be  to  flout  that  principle  of  altruism  in  which 
Mr.  Kidd  discovers,  poetically  though  not 
philosophically,  the  motive  force  of  civiliza- 
tion. "  We  love  Horace,  therefore  we  must 
endeavor  to  set  him  forth  in  a  way  to  make 
others  love  him,"  is  what  all  translators  say 
189 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

to  themselves,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
when  they  decide  to  publish  their  respective 
renditions.  And  who  shall  blame  them? 
For  where  is  the  critic,  competent  to  judge 
their  work,  who  has  not  himself  listened  to 
the  Siren's  song,  if  but  for  a  moment  in  his 
youth,  who  has  not  a  version  of  some  Hora- 
tian  ode  hid  away  in  his  portfolio,  the  mem- 
ory of  which  will  forever  prevent  him  from 
flinging  stones  at  his  fellow  offenders  ? 

But,  if  to  translate  Horace  be  impossible, 
it  is  hardly  less  impossible  to  explain  fully 
the  causes  of  his  unbounded  popularity. 
Admirers  of  Lucretius  and  Catullus  tell  us 
very  plainly  that  he  is  not  a  great  poet,  but 
somehow  we  do  not  resent  the  charge;  we 
only  read  him,  if  possible,  more  diligently 
and  affectionately.  We  leave  our  critical 
faculties  in  abeyance  when  Dante  l  introduces 
him  to  us  along  with  Homer  and  Ovid  and 
Lucan,  and  our  hearts  tell  us  that  he  is,  in 
the  truest  sense,  worthy  to  walk  with  the 
greatest  of  these  companions.  We  feel  sure 
that  Virgil  must  have  loved  him  as  a  man ;  we 
have  proof  that  Milton  loved  him  as  a  poet. 
We  deny  to  him  "  the  grand  manner,"  but 
we  attribute  to  him  every  charm.  When  we 
seek  to  analyze  this  charm,  we  find  that  where 

1  Inferno,  I.,  89. 
190 


ON  TRANSLATING   HORACE 

we  can  point  out  ten  of  its  elements,  such  as 
wit,  humor,  vivacity,  sententiousness,  kindli- 
ness, and  the  like,  there  are  ten  others, 
equally  potent  but  more  subtle,  that  escape 
us  altogether.  So  we  turn  the  saying  of 
Buffon  into  "  the  charm  is  the  man,"  and 
contentedly  exchange  analysis  for  enjoyment. 
And  yet  we  are  firmly  persuaded  that  no 
author  is  more  worthy  of  the  painstaking 
study  characteristic  of  modern  scholarship 
than  is  this  same  Epicurean  poet,  who  so 
utterly  defies  analysis  and  would  be  the  first 
to  smile  at  our  ponderous  erudition.  We  feel 
that  the  scholar  who  should  devote  the  best 
years  of  his  life  to  studying  the  influence  of 
Horace  upon  subsequent  literatures,  and  to 
collecting  the  tributes  that  have  been  paid  to 
his  genius  by  the  great  and  worthy  of  all 
lands  and  ages,  would  deserve  our  heartfelt 
benedictions.1  We  conclude,  in  short,  that 
that  most  exquisite  of  epithets,  "  the  well- 
beloved,"  so  inappropriately  bestowed  upon 
the  worthless  and  flippant  French  king,  be- 
longs to  Horace  and  to  Horace  alone,  jure 
divino. 

We   are  concerned    here,  however,  rather 
with  Horace's  translators  than  with  Horace 

1  See  in  this  connection  the  eloquent  paragraph  in  Sir 
Theodore  Martin's  Works  of  Horace,  vol.  i.,  p.  182. 
191 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

himself,  for  my  purpose  is  to  say  a  few  words 
about  the  methods  of  rendering  the  poet  that 
have  most  commended  themselves  of  recent 
years.  So  much  has  been  written  upon  this 
subject  and  so  much  remains  to  be  written, 
that  it  is  hard  to  determine  where  to  begin ; 
but  I  fancy  that  the  preface  of  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Conington  to  his  well-known  transla- 
tion of  the  Odes  will  furnish  a  proper  point 
of  departure.  Few  persons,  whether  trans- 
lators or  readers,  can  object  to  Conington's 
first  premise  that  the  translator  ought  to  aim 
at  "  some  kind  of  metrical  conformity  to  his 
original."  To  reproduce  an  original  Sapphic 
or  Alcaic  in  blank  verse,  or  in  the  couplet  of 
Pope,  is  to  repel  at  once  the  reader  who 
knows  his  Horace,  and  to  give  the  reader  who 
is  ignorant  of  Latin  a  totally  erroneous  con- 
ception of  the  rhythmical  method  of  the  poet. 
To  render  a  compressed  Latin  verse  by  a 
diffuse  English  one  is,  as  Conington  points 
out,  to  do  injustice  to  the  sententiousness  for 
which  Horace  is  justly  celebrated, —  although 
it  must  be  remarked  that  the  translator  should 
not,  in  order  to  avoid  diffuseness,  be  led  astray 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  was  recently  by  the  "  fatal 
facility"  of  the  octosyllabic  couplet.  To 
translate  Horace,  except  on  occasions,  into 
anything  but  quatrains,  is  also  to  handicap 
192 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

one's  reader  heavily  from  the  metrical  point 
of  view.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  when 
Professor  Conington  insisted  that  an  English 
measure  once  adopted  for  the  Alcaic  must  be 
used  for  every  ode  in  which  Horace  employed 
the  latter  stanza  —  a  practice  which  Mr.  Glad- 
stone avoided  — he  went  far  toward  handicap- 
ping the  translator,  who,  after  all,  has  his  rights. 
That  such  uniformity  ought  to  be  aimed  at, 
and  will  be  aimed  at,  is  doubtless  true ;  but 
there  is  one  element  of  the  problem  with 
which  Professor  Conington  did  not  suffi- 
ciently reckon.  This  is  rhyme,  which  he 
assumes  to  be  necessary  at  present  to  a  suc- 
cessful rendition  of  a  Horatian  ode.  A  uni- 
form rhymeless  stanza  can  probably  be 
applied  to  all  odes  in  a  particular  measure 
without  any  special  loss  resulting.  But  this 
can  hardly  be  the  case  with  a  rhyming  stanza, 
if  the  translator  aim,  as  he  should  do,  at  a 
fairly,  though  not  meticulously,  literal  render- 
ing of  his  original  and  not  at  the  paraphrasing 
which  so  often  satisfied  Mr.  Gladstone.  There 
will  necessarily  be  coincidences  of  sound  in 
a  literal  prose  version  of  a  Latin  stanza  that 
will  suggest  a  particular  arrangement  of 
rhymes  for  a  poetical  version.  To  adopt  a 
uniform  English  stanza  is  to  do  away  with 
this  natural  advantage,  which  presents  itself 
13  193 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

to  the  translator  oftener  than  might  be  sup- 
posed. 

A  concrete  example  will  suffice  to  make 
my  meaning  clear.  The  third  ode  of  the 
First  Book,  the  well-known  Sic  te  diva  potens 
Cypri,  is  in  what  is  called  the  Second  Ascle- 
piad  metre;  so  is  the  delightful  third  ode 
of  the  Ninth  Book,  the  Donee  gratus  eram 
tibi.  We  will  assume  that  the  translator 
has  chosen  for  the  Sic  te  diva,  a  quatrain 
with  alternating  rhymes.  Following  Professor 
Conington's  rule  of  uniformity,  he  must 
employ  the  same  stanza  for  the  Donee  gratus 
eram,  which,  by  the  way,  Conington  did 
not  do  for  reasons  he  explained  at  length. 
Now  the  sixth  stanza  of  the  latter  ode  runs 
as  follows : 

"  Quid  si  prisca  redit  Venus 

Diductosque  jugo  cogit  aeneo, 
Si  flava  excutitur  Chloe, 
Rejectaeque  patet  janua  Lydiae." 

This  may  be  translated  : 

"  What  if  the  former  love  return  and  join  with  brazen 
yoke  the  parted  ones,  if  yellow-haired  Chloe  be  shaken 
off,  and  the  door  stand  open  for  rejected  Lydia  ?  " 

If  my  memory  does  not  deceive  me,  it  was 
this  stanza,  and   especially  one  word   in  its 
last  verse,  that  determined  the  arrangement 
.194 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

of  rhymes  in  a  version  I  attempted  years  ago, 
Consule  Planco.  This  verse  seemed  to  run 
inevitably  into 

"  And  open  stand  for  Lydia  the  door" 

It  needed  but  a  moment  to  detect  in  the  first 
verse  of  the  stanza  a  sufficient  rhyme.  The 
syllable  re  of  reducit  furnished  more,  not  per- 
haps the  most  apt  of  rhymes  with  door,  but 
still  sufficient,  as  things  go  with  translators, 
and  with  a  pardonable  tautology  I  wrote  — 

"  What  if  the  former  love  once  more 
Return  —  " 

Two  other  rhymes  were  found  with  little 
difficulty  in  the  di  of  didnctos  and  in  excutitur, 
which  suggested  wide  and  cast  aside,  and  the 
whole  stanza  appeared,  omitting  strictly  met- 
rical considerations,  as  follows : 

"  What  if  the  former  love  once  more 

Return  and  yoke  the  lovers  parted  wide, 
If  Chloe,  yellow-haired,  be  cast  aside, 
And  open  stand  for  Lydia  the  door  ?  " 

This  stanza  certainly  had  the  merit  of  literal- 
ness  —  it  omitted  only  the  rather  unessential 
epithet  rejcctae  and  compressed  the  phrase>/w<£0 
cogit  aeneo  —  and  I  thought  it  had  some  merits 
of  rhythm  and  diction.  So  I  took  it  as  a  model, 
and,  with  little  difficulty,  translated  the  re- 
195 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

mainder  of  the  ode  —  with  what  amount  of 
total  success  there  is  no  need  of  discussing 
here. 

This  example,  with  many  more,  has  con- 
firmed me  in  my  belief  not  only  that  uni- 
formity of  measure  is  not  to  be  insisted  upon 
strictly  in  the  case  of  rhyming  stanzas,  but 
also  that  translators  should  search  more 
thoroughly  than  they  seem  to  do,  for  what  I 
may  call  the  rhyme  suggestions  that  are  im- 
plicit in  so  many  Horatian  stanzas.  I  am 
convinced  that  any  translator  who,  having 
adopted  a  quatrain  with  alternating  rhymes 
for  the  Sic  te  diva,  should  persist  in  reject- 
ing a  quatrain  with  internal  rhymes  for  the 
Donee  gratus  eram,  simply  because  he  was 
bent  on  preserving  uniformity,  would  be 
hampering  himself  and  doing  an  injustice  to 
his  original. 

Upon  other  points  it  is  easier  to  agree  with 
Professor  Conington.  For  a  majority  of  the 
odes,  the  iambic  movement,  which  is  natural 
to  English,  is  preferable.  This  Milton  seems 
to  have  seen,  his  disuse  of  rhyme  in  his  cele- 
brated version  of  the  Quis  multa  gracilis 
(i.,  5)  having  given  him  an  opportunity  for 
experiment  in  logaoedic  verse,  of  which  he 
did  not  avail  himself.  Here,  too,  however,  I 
must  plead  for  a  careful  study  of  each  ode  by 
196 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

the  translator,  for  I  think  that  there  are  cases 
in  which  it  would  be  almost  disastrous  to  at- 
tempt an  iambic  rendering.  Such  a  case  is 
presented,  perhaps,  by  the  "  Diffugere  nives" 
(iv.,  7).  The  iambic  renderings  of  Professor 
Conington  and  Sir  Theodore  Martin  seem  to 
me  to  stray  far  from  the  original  movement 
—  as  far  as  the  former's : 

" '  No  'scaping  death '  proclaims  the  year  " 

does  from  the  diction  of  Horace  or  of  any 
other  poet.  Both  would  have  done  better  to 
transfer  as  far  as  they  could  the  Latin  move- 
ment to  their  English  renderings.  It  is  true 
that  English  dactyls  are  dangerous  things, 
especiallyjn  translations,  where  the  padding 
or  "  packing "  which  is  natural  to  them,  is 
increased  by  the  padding  natural  to  a  trans- 
lation from  a  synthetic  into  an  analytic  lan- 
guage; but  the  dactylic  movement  of  the 
First  Archilochian,  in  which  the  Diffugere 
nives  is  written,  is  hardly  to  be  transferred 
into  English  iambics  at  all.  It  presents  more 
difficulty  than  the  transference  of  the  move- 
ment of  hexameters  proper  into  our  blank 
verse. 

Where  the  translator,  however,  makes  up 
his  mind  to  attempt  a  close  approximation 
to  the  classical  metre,  I  am  of  the   opinion 
197 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

that  he  should  eschew  the  Use  of  rhyme  as 
too  foreign  to  his  original.  But,  since  the 
use  of  rhyme  seems,  as  Conington  holds,  to 
be  essential  at  present,  if  the  English  version 
is  to  be  acceptable  as  poetry,  this  close  ap- 
proximation can  be  desirable  in  a  few  special 
cases  only.  It  will  not  do  to  dogmatize  on 
such  matters,  but  it  may  be  safely  said  that 
no  poet  has  yet  accustomed  the  English  ear 
to  the  use  of  rhymeless  verse  in  lyrical  poetry. 
What  some  future  master  may  accomplish 
is  another  matter.  Here  and  there  a  success- 
ful rhymeless  lyric  like  Collins's  famous  Ode 
to  Evening,  or  Tennyson's  Alcaics  on  Mil- 
ton, shows  us  that  rhymeless  stanzas  may  be 
used  in  lyric  poetry  with  great  effect;  but 
so  far  the  translators  of  Horace  that  have 
eschewed  rhyme  have  failed  as  a  rule,  like 
the  late  Lord  Lytton,  to  give  us  versions  that 
charm.  Yet  charm  is  what  they  should 
chiefly  endeavor  to  convey. 

I  am  still  more  convinced  that  Professor 
Conington  is  right  when  he  insists  that  the 
English  should  be  confined  "  within  the  same 
number  of  lines  as  the  Latin."  He  is  surely 
right  when  he  taxes  Sir  Theodore  Martin, 
who  so  frequently  violates  this  rule,  with  an 
exuberance  that  is  totally  at  variance  with 
the  severity  of  the  classics.  This  exuber- 
198 


ON  TRANSLATING  HORACE 

ance  is  almost  certain  to  make  its  presence 
felt  if  the  translator  abandon  the  strict  num- 
ber of  the  lines  into  which  Horace  has  com- 
pressed his  thought.  It  results,  too,  from  a 
division  into  stanzas  of  over  four  veses.  There 
is  no  rule  of  translation  that  will  so  effectively 
insure  a  successful  retention  of  the  diction  of 
the  original  as  this  of  the  line  for  line  render- 
ing. And  that  the  diction  and  the  thought 
of  the  poet  should  be  more  closely  followed 
than  is  usually  the  case,  admits  of  no  manner 
of  doubt.  I  have  already  said  that  a  close 
scrutiny  of  the  original  will  often  suggest  an 
almost  literal  rendering  of  the  thought  and 
diction.  This  literal  rendering  is  naturally 
more  desired  by  the  reader  who  is  familiar 
with  Horace  than  by  the  reader  who  is  not, 
but  it  will  be  both  pleasing  and  serviceable 
to  the  latter,  if  not  too  slavishly  obtained. 
Metrical  considerations  and  general  smooth- 
ness ought  to  weigh  with  every  translator, 
but  they  ought  not  to  outweigh  accurate 
rendering  of  diction  and  thought.  In  this 
connection  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  Coning- 
ton  does  not  go  too  far  when  he  recommends 
the  Horatian  translator  to  hold  by  the  diction 
of  our  own  Augustan  period.  That  the  age 
of  Pope  corresponds  in  many  respects  with 
that  of  Horace  is,  of  course,  true  enough, 
199 


ON  TRANSLATING   HORACE 

and  the  student  of  eighteenth  century  Eng- 
lish poetry  is  almost  sure  to  be  an  admirer 
of  the  Roman  "  bard  "  so  fashionable  at  the 
time.  But  Horace's  diction  does  not  strike 
us  as  stilted,  while  Pope's  often  does ;  and 
for  a  modern  translator  to  indulge  in  stilted 
diction  is  fatal  not  only  to  the  intrinsic  value 
of  his  work,  but  also  to  its  popularity  and 
hence  to  its  present  effectiveness.  There  is 
a  good  deal,  too,  about  our  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century  that  is  little  short  of 
commonplace;  but. commonplace  the  trans- 
lator of  Horace  can  least  afford  to  be.  Horace 
may  approach  dangerously  near  the  com- 
monplace, yet  he  always  misses  it  by  a  dex- 
terous and  graceful  turn.  The  translator, 
running  after,  will  miss  this  turn  often  enough 
as  it  is ;  he  cannot,  therefore  afford  to  steep 
himself  in  a  literature  that  has  a  tendency 
to  the  commonplace. 

To  mention  the  eighteenth  century  and 
Horace  is  to  bring  up  the  thought  ofHoratian 
paraphrases.  A  successful  paraphrase  is  often- 
times better  as  poetry  than  a  good  poetical 
translation,  and  not  infrequently  gives  a  fuller 
idea  of  Horace's  spirit.  It  is  almost  needless 
to  praise  the  work  in  this  kind  of  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson  and  Mr.  Eugene  Field.  But  a  para- 
phrase, however  good,  can  never  be  entirely 
200 


ON  TRANSLATING   HORACE 

satisfying  either  to  the  reader  that  knows 
Horace  or  to  the  reader  that  desires  to  know 
him.  Nor  can  a  prose  version  be  thoroughly 
satisfactory.  What  is  wanted  is  not  merely 
the  drift  of  the  poet's  thought,  but  so  far  as 
is  possible  what  he  actually  sang.  The  para- 
phrase may  sing,  and  the  prose  version  may 
give  us  the  thought  in  nearly  equivalent 
words,  but  neither  answers  our  desires  so 
well  as  a  good  poetical  translation  does  — 
such  a  translation,  let  us  say,  as  Professor 
Goldwin  Smith's  of  the  Ccelo  tonantem  (Hi.,  5). 
Yet  there  is  surely  room  for  these  three 
methods  of  rendering,  and  just  as  surely  one 
could  write  indefinitely  on  the  whole  fascinat- 
ing subject  did  not  one  consult  the  interests 
of  Horace  and  of  one's  readers. 


201 


VI 

THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 


203 


VI 
THE    BYRON    REVIVAL 

IT  is  now  some  years  since  the  late  Prof. 
Nichol,  in  his  excellent  life  of  Byron,  de- 
clared that  his  hero  was  "  resuming  his 
place,"  and  that  the  closing  quarter  of  the 
century  would  reverse  the  unjust  verdict 
against  him  pronounced  by  the  second  and 
third  quarters.  Shortly  after  this  statement 
was  made,  Matthew  Arnold,  as  though  to 
confirm  its  truth,  published  his  well-known 
volume  of  selections  from  Byron's  poetry, 
and  maintained  in  his  preface  that  when 
the  year  1900  should  be  turned,  the  two 
chief  names  of  modern  English  poetry  would 
be  those  of  Wordsworth  and  Byron.  To 
the  latter  claim,  Mr.  Swinburne  immediately 
replied,  in  what  purported  to  be  a  critical 
essay  on  the  two  poets  just  named,  but  was 
really  a  marvellous  dithyramb  of  inveterate 
prejudice. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  Mr.  Swin- 
burne, too,  had  a  pair  of  chief  poets  to  set  up 
—  to  wit,  Shelley  and  Coleridge.     The  con- 
205 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

troversy  thus  begun  received  some  attention 
from  the  critics ;  but  the  general  public  was 
more  interested  in  reading  Tennyson  and 
in  forming  Browning  clubs.  If  the  tide  of 
favor  began  setting  toward  Byron,  its  move- 
ment was  practically  imperceptible;  for  as 
late  as  1896  Prof.  George  Saintsbury  could 
maintain,  without  serious  loss  to  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  critic,  that  Scott  could  not  be 
ranked  below  Byron  on  any  sound  theory 
of  poetical  criticism,  and  that  the  latter 
could  not  be  read  in  close  juxtaposition 
with  a  real  poet  like  Shelley  without  dis- 
astrous results  to  his  fame. 

Twelve  months  later,  however,  Byron  was 
being  more  discussed,  if  not  more  read. 
The  war  between  Greece  and  Turkey  natu- 
rally induced  men  to  ponder  upon  his  dis- 
interested devotion  to  the  cause  of  Hellas 
and  upon  the  glorious  close  of  his  wayward 
life.  The  newspapers  took  him  up;  and 
certainly  those  of  Paris,  where  I  happened 
to  be  at  the  time,  did  not  bear  out  the 
opinion  afterward  expressed  to  me  by  an 
eminent  French  critic,  who  was  doubtless 
in  the  right,  that  the  influence  of  Byron  had 
somewhat  waned  in  France. 

Close  upon  this  transient  notoriety  came 
an  important  proof  that  the  great  poet's  fame 
206 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

was  not  destitute  of  champions  in  his  native 
land  after  the  death  of  Matthew  Arnold. 
The  first  volume  of  a  critical  edition  of  his 
complete  works,  under  the  editorship  of 
Mr.  W.  E.  Henley,  was  issued  and  cordially 
received;  and  it  was  announced  that  Mr. 
John  Murray  would  shortly  draw  on  his 
stores  of  manuscripts,  and  publish  an  edi- 
tion that  should  be  practically  final.  Ao 
cordingly  we  now  have  Mr.  Henley's  edition 
of  the  Letters  from  1804  to  1813,  and  two 
volumes  of  the  Murray  edition  —  one  con- 
taining the  earlier  poems,  edited  by  Mr. 
Ernest  Hartley  Coleridge,  and  one  contain- 
ing Letters  dating  from  1798  to  1811,  edited 
by  Mr.  Rowland  E.  Prothero.  Both  editions 
are  to  be  in  twelve  volumes;  and  the  pub- 
lishers promise  to  complete  them  without 
loss  of  time. 

The  simultaneous  appearance  of  two  such 
rival  editions  would  be  noteworthy  in  the 
case  of  any  poet,  but  is  particularly  re- 
markable in  the  case  of  Byron.  As  Mr. 
Henley  says,  his  own  is  "  practically  the 
first  reissue  on  novel  and  peculiar  lines 
which  has  been  attempted  for  close  on 
seventy  years."  There  have  been  innumer- 
able popular  editions  of  Byron  to  satisfy  a 
demand  which  some  booksellers  pronounce 
207 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

constant,  but  others  declare  to  be  falling 
off;  yet,  to  the  present  year,  if  any  one 
wished  to  do  critical  work  on  the  poet,  he 
had  to  resort  mainly  to  the  seventeen-volume 
Murray  edition  of  1832.  The  general  ex- 
cellence of  this  may  partly  account  for  the 
fact  that  in  an  age  famous  for  textual  criti- 
cism Byron  did  not  receive  until  recently 
an  honor  long  ago  paid  to  Shelley  and 
Wordsworth  and  Keats ;  but  one  can  hardly 
help  believing  that  popular  and  critical  in- 
difference was  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
neglect.  Now,  however,  that  in  this  im- 
portant particular  he  is  receiving  his  own 
with  interest,  it  may  be  well  to  take  a  nearer 
view  of  the  rival  editions. 

That  of  Mr.  Murray  is  clearly  the  only  one 
entitled  to  call  itself  complete :  it  is  equally 
clear  that  he  has  been  unfortunate  in  not 
securing  Mr.  Henley  to  edit  it,  with  Mr. 
Prothero  to  edit  Mr.  Henley.  Mr.  Prothero 
has  done  his  work  well;  he  prints  eighty 
more  letters  for  the  same  space  of  time  than 
Mr.  Henley;  but,  as  he  gracefully  acknowl- 
edges, he  cannot  handle  his  materials  in 
the  attractive  way  his  rival  can.  Mr.  Hen- 
ley's notes  abound  in  errors,  but  are  almost 
as  interesting  as  the  letters  he  annotates,  — 
which  is  saying  a  great  deal ;  for  Byron, 
208 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

with  his  dash,  directness,  and  force,  ranks 
near  the  very  top  of  the  world's  great 
letter-writers. 

Mr.  Henley's  editorial  success  has  a  two- 
fold source  —  first,  his  devotion  to  Byron, 
whom  he  considers  to  be  "  the  sole  English 
poet  (for  Sir  Walter  conquered  in  prose) 
bred  since  Milton  to  live  a  master  influence 
in  the  world  at  large,"  and  second,  his  in- 
timate knowledge  of  the  England  of  the 
Regency,  whose  hidebound,  but  corrupt, 
society  could  tolerate  Castlereagh  and  Yar- 
mouth and  the  Prince  himself,  but  drove 
Byron  into  exile.  His  knowledge  and  love 
of  his  subject  are  indeed  so  great  that  one 
would  almost  acknowledge  him  as  an  ideal 
editor,  in  spite  of  his  talent  for  unscholarly, 
if  trifling,  blunders,  did  not  one  discover  in 
his  work  a  certain  lack  of  refinement  that  is 
disturbing.  For  example,  there  was  really 
no  necessity  for  him  to  denominate  Pierce 
Egan  an  "  ass,"  or  the  quack  that  tortured 
Byron's  foot  an  "  ignorant  brute."  But,  not- 
withstanding such  blemishes  and  the  normal 
assertiveness  of  his  manner,  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  Mr.  Henley's  will  long  re- 
main a  most  interesting  edition  of  Byron  for 
the  general  reader. 

This  is  not  to  say,  however,  that  the  hand- 
'4  209 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

some  Murray  edition  is  valuable  only  be- 
cause it  is  complete  and,  apparently,  final. 
Mr.  Prothero  has  annotated  the  letters  most 
carefully;  and  I  cannot  agree  with  those 
critics  who  think  that  he  should  have  cast 
aside  some  of  his  materials.  There  are  com- 
paratively few  of  the  social  notes  and  letters 
included  that  do  not  throw  light  on  Byron's 
character;  and  nearly  all  are  interesting. 
The  latter  statement  cannot  be  made,  of 
course,  for  the  early  poems,  which  Mr.  Cole- 
ridge has  annotated  with  scholarly  thorough- 
ness. It  will  take  the  verve  of  Mr.  Henley's 
notes  to  make  the  Hours  of  Idleness  go 
down.  I  have  re-read  these  youthful  verses : 
and  the  only  pleasure  I  could  get  from  them 
lay  in  the  fact  that  the  various  readings 
collated  by  the  new  editor  seemed  to  show 
that,  on  the  whole,  when  Byron  altered  a 
verse,  he  improved  it  —  whence  I  derived 
a  vague,  but  perhaps  vain,  hope  that  suc- 
ceeding volumes  will  enable  us  to  think  a 
little  better  of  him  as  a  technical  artist  than 
most  of  us,  whether  we  admire  him  or  not, 
are  now  able  to  do. 

The  eleven  fresh  poems  printed  by  Mr. 
Coleridge  do  not  help  matters  out  in  the 
least;  but  this  need  not  take  the  relish  from 
the  news  that  fifteen  stanzas  of  Don  Juan 

210 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

and  a  fairly  large  fragment  of  the  third  part 
of  The  Deformed  Transformed  are  to  be 
given  us  in  due  season.  It  is  a  pity,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  those  who  intend  to  use 
this  edition  to  re-read  their  Byron  slowly, 
that  the  publishers  did  not  wait  until  two 
volumes  of  the  poetry  were  ready.  Even 
the  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers, 
though  it  be  admitted  to  be  the  best  strictly 
literary  satire  between  The  Dunciad  and 
A  Fable  for  Critics,  cannot  neutralize  the 
deadly  effect  of  the  Hours  of  Idleness 
and  give  life  to  this  first  of  the  six  Volumes 
that  are  to  contain  Byron's  poetry.  I  know 
of  no  other  poet  of  eminence  who  is  so 
handicapped  by  his  youthful  verses.  Others 
have  written  stuff  as  worthless,  or  even  worse ; 
but  no  other  that  I  can  recall  has  barred 
the  way  to  his  great  achievements  by  such 
a  mass  of  uniformly  immature  and  mediocre 
work.  This  has  been  said  and  thought 
thousands  of  times,  to  be  sure,  since  the 
Edinburgh  printed  its  needlessly  harsh 
critique  and  stung  Byron's  genius  into  life ; 
but  it  does  not  seem  to  have  suggested, 
either  to  editors  or  to  publishers,  the  pro- 
priety, in  popular  editions  at  least,  of  be- 
ginning the  poetical  works  with  the  English 
Bards  and  printing  the  early  verses  as  an 

211 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

appendix.  We  are  constantly  laboring  to 
facilitate  approach  to  our  poets,  we  compile 
volumes  of  selections,  we  introduce  them 
and  annotate  them ;  yet  we  seldom  adopt 
this  easy  and  useful  plan  of  putting  their 
impedimenta  in  the  rear. 

But  have  these  two  editions  stimulated  a 
real  Byron  revival,  or  can  any  rearrangement 
of  his  works  make  him  genuinely  popular 
once  more  among  English  readers?  I  can- 
not, with  the  best  wish  to  persuade  myself, 
believe  that  any  permanent  reaction  in  his 
favor  has  as  yet  set  in,  nor  am  I  at  all  confi- 
dent that  he  will  ever  be  read  with  the  old 
enthusiasm  by  all  classes  of  people.  My 
reasons  for  these  opinions  cannot  be  given 
without  some  discussion  of  his  much-mooted 
rank  as  a  poet ;  but,  as  the  point  in  question 
is  one  of  real  critical  importance,  and  as  the 
present  is  a  particularly  opportune  time,  I 
shall  not  shrink  from  taking  part  in  what  may 
seem  at  first  thought  to  be  a  hopelessly  in- 
volved controversy. 

Byron,  as  we  all  know,  was  acknowledged 
by  his  contemporaries,  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  to  be  the  master  poet  of  his  generation. 
He  has  practically  lost  this  position  in  the 
eyes  of  English-speaking  peoples,  but  has 
kept  it  among  Continental  peoples.  Taine 
212 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

and  Castelar  and  Elze  place  him  at  the  sum- 
mit of  poetic  renown,  much  as  Goethe  did 
over  seventy  years  ago.  No  Englishman, 
however,  not  even  Matthew  Arnold,  writes  of 
him  so  enthusiastically  as  Sir  Walter  Scott 
could  do  in  all  sincerity.  The  reaction  against 
him  set  in  shortly  after  his  death,  Carlyle 
giving  it  potent  voice ;  and  to-day  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  Brown- 
ing can  count  their  partisans  by  scores,  where 
Byron  can  count  one. 

Nor  is  it  merely  a  question  of  his  relative 
rank  among  nineteenth-century  poets.  Such 
critics  as  Mr.  Swinburne,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  and 
Mr.  Lionel  Johnson  have  practically  denied 
him  any  standing  at  all  as  a  great  poet ;  and 
even  his  stanch  admirers  feel  called  upon  to 
qualify  their  praise.  When  Arnold  extolled 
him  at  the  expense  of  Shelley,  the  critics,  great 
and  little,  took  a  professional  pleasure  in 
charging  their  leader  with  being  for  once 
thoroughly  erratic. 

Many  reasons  have  been  brought  forward 
to  account  for  this  change  of  taste  and 
opinion  among  Englishmen.  Byron's  enemies 
say  that  we  are  more  clear-sighted  than  our 
grandfathers  were,  that  we  have  stripped  the 
masks  from  his  Laras  and  Conrads  and  Man- 
freds,  and  exposed  the  tawdry  pseudo-poet 
213 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

beneath ;  that  we  know  better  than  to  receive 
a  traveller's  versified  note-book  as  an  inspired 
poem ;  that,  if  he  has  any  merit  at  all,  it  is 
merely  as  a  satirist  and  a  rhetorician.  Less 
rabid  critics  call  attention  to  the  fact,  that, 
after  the  strenuous  Revolutionary  period  was 
over,  Englishmen  felt  the  need  of  calmer, 
more  moral,  and  more  artistic  poetry,  and 
that  what  was  Tennyson's  opportunity  was 
naturally  Byron's  extremity.  In  a  critical, 
neo- Alexandrian  age,  they  say,  the  poet  who 
wrote  just  as  passion  and  impulse  dictated 
can  find  no  appreciative  audience  save  among 
the  semi-cultured.  On  the  Continent  the 
case  is  different,  because  foreigners  are  natur- 
ally blind  to  artistic  defects  that  are  patent  to 
every  Englishman,  and  Byron's  force  and 
passion  can  produce  their  legitimate  effects 
unhindered,  much  as  they  did  among  our 
forefathers,  who  were  living  in  a  transitional 
poetic  period,  and  were,  moreover,  dazzled 
by  the  fiery  personality  of  the  man. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  moderate 
views  just  given  contain  much  that  is  true. 
I  will  go  further  and  say  that  they  are  prac- 
tically the  grounds  on  which  I  rest  my  belief 
that  no  genuine  revival  of  Byron  will  be 
possible  among  us  for  a  long  time  to  come. 
We  are,  as  a  rule,  too  sophisticated,  too 
214 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

Alexandrian  in  our  tastes,  to  enjoy  greatly 
poetry  that  is  thrown  off  at  a  white  heat,  save 
perhaps,  for  variety,  the  ballads  with  which 
Mr.  Kipling  has  been  favoring  us.  We  pre- 
fer the  artistic,  the  carefully  wrought;  and, 
even  so,  we  do  not  desire  that  the  poet's  art 
should  be  as  strenuous  as  it  is  in  Paradise 
Lost.  Until  something  stirs  us  up  as  a  race, 
Byron  is  likely  to  be  a  favorite  only  with 
youths  who  are  naturally  passionate  and  with 
disillusioned  men  who  can  get  pleasure  out 
of  wit  and  satire. 

But  reasons  that  apply  to  the  mass  of 
readers  do  not  necessarily  apply  to  critics  and 
men  of  more  than  ordinary  culture.  Such 
persons  ought  to  be  able  to  rid  themselves, 
to  some  extent,  of  the  prejudices  of  their  own 
age  and  to  fit  themselves  to  enjoy  genuine 
poetic  merit  of  every  sort.  If  it  be  true  that 
Byron  possessed  a  splendid  personality,  the 
force,  the  passion,  the  sincerity  of  which  have 
been  transmitted  to  his  work,  it  is  a  sign  of 
weakness  when  the  cultured  man  of  to-day 
fails  to  enjoy  these  qualities,  because,  for- 
sooth, he  is  offended  by  a  false  note  here,  a 
glaring  patch  of  color  there.  There  seems, 
too,  to  be  an  inherent  weakness  in  our  critical 
methods,  if  we  can  neglect,  misunderstand, 
or  treat  with  contempt  a  writer  who  was 
215 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

believed  by  his  contemporaries  to  have  dom- 
inated their  age,  and  from  whom  foreigners 
have  gathered  literary  inspiration  for  nearly 
a  century.  In  other  words,  while  there  may 
be  good  reason  to  believe  that  a  popular 
reaction  in  Byron's  favor  is  not  to  be  looked 
for  shortly,  is  there  any  reason  to  believe  that 
a  majority  of  our  critics  and  men  of  culture 
must  continue  to  keep  their  faces  turned 
away  from  him,  as  seems  to  be  the  case  at 
present? 

I  am  inclined  to  answer,  No.  Byron's 
case  with  the  critics  is  by  no  means  so  hope- 
less as  the  comparative  failure  of  Matthew 
Arnold's  defence  of  him  would  seem  to  prove. 
This  is,  on  the  whole,  an  age  in  which  criti- 
cism is  in  the  hands  of  impressionists  and 
scholars ;  that  is  to  say,  most  men  who  write 
about  literary  matters  are  critics  of  taste  or 
critics  of  knowledge.  Above  these  two 
classes,  unifying  and  correlating  their  respec- 
tive qualities,  are  to  be  found  the  critics  of 
judgment,  who  are  naturally  not  numerous  at 
any  period.  Matthew  Arnold  belonged  to 
this  last  class ;  and  some  of  his  judgments, 
particularly  those  relating  to  Byron  and 
Shelley,  were  unintelligible  to  Mr.  Swinburne 
and  Mr.  Saintsbury,  among  others,  simply 
because,  as  critics  of  taste  and  of  knowledge, 
216 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

respectively,  they  were  better  fitted  to  play  the 
advocate  than  to  judge.  Now  judgment  has 
always  characterized  the  Continental  critics, 
especially  the  French,  more  than  it  has  the 
English ;  and  when  we  find  men  like  Taine, 
Elze,  and  Castelar  practically  agreeing  in  their 
estimates  of  Byron,  it  ought  to  make  us  pause. 
A  cultivated  taste  means  much ;  wide  and 
accurate  knowledge  means  much :  but  the 
impressionists  and  scholars  have  between  them 
managed  to  get  English  criticism  into  an 
almost  anarchical  state ;  and  the  time  is  prob- 
ably not  far  distant  when  the  higher  claims 
of  the  critics  of  judgment  will  be  acknowledged 
with  relief,  even  at  the  risk  of  the  establish- 
ment of  a  dictatorial  power  like  that  of  Dr. 
Johnson.  Such  a  dogmatic  reign  as  his  will 
not,  of  course,  be  seen  again ;  but  chaos  at 
least  will  not  be  long  tolerated.  And  when 
anarchy  ends  among  the  critics,  Byron 
may  come  once  more  into  favor,  for  the  fol- 
lowing reasons,  which  I  submit  not  as  my 
own,  —  that  would  be  presumptuous  in  view 
of  what  I  have  just  written,  —  but  as  gathered 
by  me  from  my  reading  of  the  critics,  and 
tested  by  a  recent  reperusal  of  the  whole  of 
Byron's  poetical  work. 

Mr.  Henley  calls  Byron  the  "  voice-in-chief" 
of  his  generation ;  and  such  was  the  opinion 
217 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

of  contemporaries  like  Sir  Walter  Scott  and 
Shelley.  Hatred  of  established  conventions, 
political,  religious,  and  social ;  love  for  nature 
in  her  wilder  aspects ;  romantic  fervor  in  per- 
sonal attachments;  lack  of  reticence  in  the 
expression  of  emotions,  —  in  short,  a  fervid 
individualism,  may  be  said  to  have  been  the 
leavening  characteristics  of  the  age ;  and  they 
plainly  received  their  fullest  utterance  in 
Byron's  poetry.  He  may,  therefore,  be  called 
legitimately  the  poet  of  an  age;  but  we 
should  not  pay  him  the  honors  due  to  this  high 
class  of  poets  until  we  have  measured  him 
with  Dante  or  Shakspere  or  Milton,  and 
determined  whether  he  is  also  a  poet  for  all 
time.  His  present  obscuration  does  not 
absolve  us  from  this  comparison;  for  there 
have  been  times  when  even  Dante's  fame  has 
been  somewhat  obscured  in  Italy. 

The  immediate  effects  of  such  a  compari- 
son cannot  but  be  disastrous  to  Byron.  He 
has  not  the  high  moral  earnestness  of  Dante 
or  Milton ;  he  has  not  their  intellectual  scope ; 
he  has  not  their  invariably  perfect  style. 
Whether  as  man  or  poet,  he  is  at  once  seen 
to  be  far  their  inferior ;  and,  if  we  were  to 
confine  our  attention  to  his  conduct  or  to 
his  marvellously  erratic  judgments  about  men 
and  books,  it  would  seem  to  be  an  imperti- 
218 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

nence  to  mention  his  name  along  with  those 
of  such  consummate  masters.  Yet  he  voiced 
the  best  of  his  age,  and  possessed  a  person- 
ality of  transcendent  force.  Are  we,  there- 
fore, quite  sure  that  the  comparison  we  are 
instituting  is  unnecessary?  Have  we  not 
omitted  to  consider  some  essential  element? 

We  have.  The  great  poets,  "not  of  an 
age,  but  for  all  time,"  have  all  left  master- 
pieces in  which  their  genius  nas  taken  a  long 
and  sustained  flight,  —  masterpieces  each  in 
its  way  unapproachable.  Has  Byron  left  any 
such?  He  has,  in  Don  Juan,  and  its  pen- 
dants, Beppo  and  The  Vision  of  Judgment. 
These  great  poems  are,  to  be  sure,  vastly 
inferior  to  The  Divine  Comedy,  Othello, 
and  Paradise  Lost;  but  Don  Juan,  at  least, 
is  akin  to  them  in  being  a  work  of  sus- 
tained poetic  imagination,  perfect  of  its  sort, 
unapproachable,  and  perennially  fresh.  It 
voices  its  author  and  his  age  ;  it  is  sui  generis, 
the  greatest  of  humorous  epics,  couched  in  a 
style  that  could  not  be  changed  except  for 
the  worse,  and  unique  in  its  combination  of 
wit,  humor,  and  satire  with  a  genuine  and 
rich  vein  of  romantic  and  descriptive  poetry. 
It  is,  in  my  opinion,  the  single  sustained 
work  of  poetic  imagination  produced  in  nine- 
teenth-century England  that  keeps  a  level 
219 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

flight,  the  only  one  written  in  a  style  and 
verse-form  as  absolutely  appropriated  by  its 
author  as  English  blank  verse  is  by  Milton, 
the  Latin  hexameter  by  Virgil,  and  the 
Romantic  Alexandrine  by  Victor  Hugo.  I 
will  go  further  and  say  that,  to  me  at  least, 
it  is  the  single  long  poem  in  English  since 
Paradise  Lost  that  grows  fresher  with  each 
reading  and  that  gives  me  the  sense  of 
being  in  the  presence  of  a  spirit  of  almost 
boundless  capacity.  If  this  spirit  does  not 
soar  into  the  heaven  of  heavens,  it  at  least 
never  falls  to  earth  (save  from  the  point  of 
view  of  morals),  but  preserves  a  strong  and 
middle  flight. 

What  has  just  been  claimed  for  Don 
Juan  is  practically  what  many  critics  have 
seen  and  said ;  but  they  have  not,  as  a  rule, 
made  sufficient  use  of  Byron's  masterpiece  to 
connect  him  with  the  great  world-poets  on 
the  one  hand,  or  to  separate  him,  on  the 
other,  from  his  English  contemporaries  and 
successors.  Elze,  indeed,  has  placed  him  in 
a  supreme  position  as  representing  "  lyrical 
verse  conceived  in  its  widest  sense  as  subjec- 
tive poetry"  ("die  Lyrik  im  weitesten  Sinne 
als  subjective  Poesie  aufgefasst ") ;  but  this 
is  a  rather  dangerous  stand  to  take,  both 
because  the  great  world-poets  have  not  won 
220 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

their  position  by  their  lyrical  work,  and  be- 
cause Byron's  lyrical  efforts,  whether  in  a 
technical  or  a  broader  sense,  are  often  so 
faulty  that  to  proclaim  him  as  a  supreme  lyr- 
ist is  practically  to  assert  that  he  was  a  great 
poet  because  he  was  a  great  personality.  It 
is  safer  to  argue  that  the  poets  of  the  highest 
class  are  always  represented  by  sustained 
masterpieces,  and  that  Don  Juan  is  suffi- 
ciently such  a  work  to  warrant  our  placing 
its  author,  who  also  voiced  the  aspirations  of 
his  age  and  was  a  tremendous  personality, 
among  the  world-poets,  but  beneath  them 
all  in  rank. 

Applying  now  this  "  masterpiece  "  test  to 
the  much-disputed  question  of  Byron's  rela- 
tive position  among  the  English  poets  of  this 
century,  we  must  perhaps  conclude  that  even 
Matthew  Arnold  has  not  made  sufficient  use 
of  it.  He  has  had  a  discerning  eye  for  the 
beauty  and  value  of  the  poetical  passages 
scattered  profusely  through  Byron's  works, 
just  as  he  has  had  for  the  similar  passages  in 
Wordsworth;  but  he  has  seemingly  failed  to 
consider  architectonics,  and  has  thus  given 
the  palm  to  Wordsworth  on  the  just  score  of 
the  superior  quality  of  the  latter's  work  when 
at  its  best.  But  where  is  Wordsworth's  in- 
disputable sustained  masterpiece?  Even  the 
221 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality 
has  serious  competitors,  and,  with  all  its 
beauty  and  power,  does  not  connect  its 
author  with  the  world-poets.  The  Excur- 
sion has  not  won  its  way  in  England  yet, 
much  less  on  the  Continent ;  and  he  would  be 
a  rash  Wordsworthian  who  should  assert  that 
it  ever  will.  And  what  have  Keats  and  Cole- 
ridge to  show  in  the  way  of  masterpieces, 
such  as  we  are  considering?  What  has 
Shelley,  whose  Prometheus  Unbound  and 
The  Cenci,  though  in  some  respects  won- 
derful, are  neither  fully  unique  nor  represen- 
tative? As  for  the  Idylls  of  the  King  and 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  one  can  merely 
say  that  they  are  still  under  the  fire  of  the 
critics,  and  that  the  former,  at  least,  is  not 
likely  to  be  pronounced  unique  or  masterful, 
except  by  persons  who  know  little  about 
other  heroic  poetry. 

According  to  the  above  reasoning,  if  the 
serried  hosts  of  the  partisans  of  other  poets 
will  allow  the  word  to  pass,  it  would  seem 
that  Byron  is  connected  with  the  world-poets 
in  three  respects :  he  has  written  a  sustained 
masterpiece ;  he  is  a  representative  character 
who  has  been  accepted  by  the  world  at  large ; 
and  he  possesses  a  tremendously  powerful 
personality.  No  other  modern  Englishman 
222 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

is  so  connected  with  the  world-poets ;  but 
Byron  himself  falls  below  them  in  respect  to 
the  inferior  nature  of  his  masterpiece  and  of 
his  own  moral,  intellectual  and  artistic  quali- 
fications. Yet  there  is  also  another,  though 
a  secondary,  feature  of  his  work  that  binds 
him  to  the  masters,  and  distinguishes  him 
from  most  of  his  contemporaries  and  suc- 
cessors—  I  mean  the  wide  scope  taken  by 
his  versatility.  A  discussion  of  this  point 
will  naturally  lead  us  to  take  a  rapid  survey 
of  his  entire  poetical  achievement. 

Passing  over  the  Hours  of  Idleness,  it  is 
to  be  noted  that  as  early  as  1808  Byron  was 
capable  of  a  fine  lyric.  When  We  Two 
Parted  dates  from  this  year,  and  breathes  a 
spirit  of  passionate  sorrow  hardly  equalled  in 
literature ;  yet  the  major  part  of  the  lyrics  of 
this  and  the  next  few  years  cannot  be  said  to 
be  of  a  high  order.  There  are  some  good 
occasional  verses,  and  Maid  of  Athens,  I 
Enter  thy  Garden  of  Roses,  There  be  None 
of  Beauty's  Daughters,  rank  very  high ;  the 
last-named  being  fully  worthy  of  Shelley  at 
his  best:  but,  although  the  general  level  of 
the  Hours  of  Idleness  is  surpassed,  no 
solid  foundation  for  fame  has  yet  been  laid, 
even  if  the  verve  of  the  English  Bards  be 
taken  into  account.  In  1812  the  stanzas  to 
223 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

Thyrza,  beginning,  "  And  thou  art  dead,  as 
young  and  fair,"  showed  what  Byron  might 
do  in  the  elegy  if  he  had  a  mind  ;  and  in  1815 
the  Hebrew  Melodies,  with  their  one  su- 
preme lyric  (She  Walks  in  Beauty),  and 
at  least  three  admirable  songs,  gave  any  one 
the  right  to  expect  great  things  of  him  as  a 
lyrist.  A  little  later  his  domestic  troubles 
occasioned  the  writing  of  Fare  Thee  Well, 
and  the  three  poems  addressed  to  Augusta; 
but,  after  the  later  cantos  of  Childe  Harold, 
the  dramas,  the  final  tales,  and  Don  Juan 
began  to  occupy  his  mind,  lyrical  work  be- 
came a  matter  of  minor  importance.  He  did 
not  eschew  it,  of  course ;  for  Manfred  and 
other  dramatic  poems  required  it ;  and  here 
and  there  he  wrote  an  excellent,  though 
hardly  a  perfect,  song.  Even  in  Don  Juan  he 
made  room  for  the  eloquent  Isles  of  Greece; 
and  at  Missolonghi  itself  he  composed 
those  stanzas  on  his  thirty-sixth  birthday 
which  will  be  forgotten  only  when  men  cease 
to  remember  the  nobly  pathetic  death  that 
soon  after  befell  him. 

Taken  in  its  totality,  his  lyric  work  must 
rank  far  below  that  of  Shelley  and  Burns,  to 
name  no  others ;  but  it  requires  little  critical 
discernment  to  perceive  that  he  was  capable 
of  pushing  any  of  his  rivals  close,  if  he  had 
224 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

cared  to  put  forth  his  full  powers.  It  is  idle 
to  affirm  that  the  man  who  wrote  some  of 
the  doggerel  in  Heaven  and  Earth  could 
never  have  been  a  true  lyrist.  The  aberra- 
tions of  men  of  genius,  even  of  almost  con- 
summate artists,  are  not  to  be  accounted  for; 
and  there  are  things  perilously  near  doggerel 
in  the  mature  work  of  poets  like  Shelley  and 
Tennyson.  Byron's  aberrations  in  the  matter 
of  bad  lyrical  work  are  probably  more  dis- 
tressing than  those  of  any  other  great  poet ; 
but  they  are  to  be  accounted  for  rather  by 
the  restlessness  of  his  temperament  than  by 
his  native  incapacity  to  write  a  true  song. 
He  was  much  besides  a  lyric  poet;  but  in 
gauging  his  versatility  we  must  not  over- 
look his  undeveloped,  but  genuine,  gift  for 
singing,  nor  the  absolute  worth  of  at  least  a 
score  of  his  lyrics. 

Byron's  contemporary  fame  took  firm  root 
with  the  publication  of  the  first  two  cantos 
of  Childe  Harold  in  1812.  It  is  difficult 
now  to  understand  how  he  could  "  awake 
and  find  himself  famous  "  for  such  far  from 
supreme  work ;  but  we  must  remember  that 
people  had  had  time  to  grow  somewhat 
weary  of  Sir  Walter's  metrical  romances  of 
Scotland,  and  that  the  day  had  not  come 
for  popular  appreciation  of  Wordsworth. 
'5  225 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

And  the  first  cantos  of  Harold,  with  all 
their  affectations  and  imperfections,  have 
many  decided  merits  which  are  still  visible 
in  this  day  of  reaction  against  them.  The 
invocation  to  the  second  canto,  and  such 
passages  as  that  beginning,  "  Fair  Greece, 
sad  relic  of  departed  worth,"  will  attract 
readers  long  after  Mr.  Swinburne's  contemp- 
tuous depreciation  of  the  entire  poem  shall 
have  been  forgotten.  Besides  there  is  in 
them  a  foreshadowing  of  the  descriptive  power 
that  was  to  make  the  third  and  fourth  cantos 
memorable.  In  short,  although  Byron  needed 
to  work  off  his  crude  energies  in  the  Eastern 
tales,  to  be  disgusted  with  the  licentious 
and  frivolous  society  of  the  Regency,  and  to 
be  stirred  to  the  depths  by  his  domestic 
troubles,  before  his  genius  could  be  fully 
roused,  there  were  abundant  signs  of  the 
existence  of  that  genius  from  the  moment 
that  Scott,  with  a  prudent  magnanimity,  ab- 
dicated the  throne  of  verse  in  his  favor. 

The  Eastern  tales  that  followed  in  quick 
succession,  The  Giaour,  The  Bride  of 
Abydos,  The  Corsair,  and  Lara  natur- 
ally increased  his  reputation,  because  they 
were  eminently  readable  and  because  they 
seemed  to  be  partly  autobiographic.  None 
knew  what  the  wild  young  peer  had  done  in 
226 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

the  East ;  therefore,  every  one  read  the  tales 
and  speculated.  The  Byronic  hero  became 
quite  a  social  personage,  —  a  fact  which  has 
since  led  to  not  a  little  depreciation  of  this 
portion  of  the  poet's  works.  We  are  now 
told  that  The  Giaour  is  the  only  one  of 
the  early  tales  possessing  a  spark  of  life ;  and, 
while  this  is  an  exaggeration,  it  is  impossible 
to  deny  that  it  was  a  good  thing  for  Byron's 
fame  when,  by  rapid  working,  he  exhausted 
his  Eastern  vein.  The  Bride  and  The 
Corsair,  however,  contain  several  passages 
of  imperishable  beauty;  and,  much  as  the 
mystery  and  gloom  of  Lara  may  be  out 
of  fashion,  it  is  hardly  fair  to  deny  the  power 
and  the  literary  influence  of  that  romance  in 
the  couplets  of  Pope.  And  besides  the 
poetical  passages,  there  was  a  vigor  of  nar- 
ration that  somewhat  made  up  for  the  marked 
poverty  of  characterization,  and  that  pre- 
luded the  more  successful  later  tales  and  the 
supreme  achievement  of  Don  Juan.  In- 
deed, Byron  must  have  felt  that  he  had  a 
faculty  for  narration,  since  he  wrote  The 
Island  as  late  as  1823. 

The    Siege  of  Corinth   and    Parisina    ap- 
peared   shortly   after    his     marriage;    while 
The  Prisoner  of  Chillon   and   Mazeppa  date 
respectively  from   1816  and  1818.     His  men- 
227 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

tal  and  artistic  growth  was  distinctly  revealed 
in  these  pieces,  the  third  of  which  has  be- 
come classical.  Although  The  Siege  ends 
badly  and  contains  much  crude  work,  it  is 
memorable  for  its  descriptive  strength;  and 
there  are  some  passages  and  scenes  in  both 
Parisina  and  Mazeppa  that  will  perish 
only  with  the  language.  Even  The  Island, 
which  has  been  declared  to  be  a  total  failure 
by  so  well  disposed  a  critic  as  Mr.  J.  A. 
Symonds,  is  such  only  in  the  first  canto.  It 
manages  to  throw  a  kind  of  Chateaubriand 
glamour  over  the  South  Sea  Islands,  and 
proves  that,  even  after  its  author's  hand  had 
become  subdued  to  the  far  from  sentimental 
materials  of  Don  Juan,  it  had  not  entirely 
lost  its  early  cunning  in  romantic  narrative. 
We  must,  therefore,  conclude,  in  despite  of 
the  critics,  that  Byron's  tales  count  for  some- 
thing in  his  life-work,  and  are  another  proof 
of  his  wonderful  versatility. 

It  is  worth  while  to  note,  that,  just  as  the 
unfairness  of  his  early  critics  stimulated  Byron 
to  achieve  the  first  stage  of  his  fame,  so  the 
clamors  of  society  against  him  after  his  rup- 
ture with  his  wife  incited  him  to  the  still  higher 
achievement  represented  by  the  third  and 
fourth  cantos  of  Childe  Harold.  The 
poet  has  now  practically  become  another 
228 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

man,  and  has  transported  his  readers  to  a 
new  world.  His  intellectual  grasp  has  be- 
come firmer  and  larger;  his  artistic  powers 
have  been  strengthened  and  chastened,  though 
not  to  the  height  of  perfection ;  and  his  emo- 
tions and  passions  have  been  keyed  to  a  point 
of  intensity  almost  unparalleled.  The  result  is 
a  series  of  marvellous  passages,  which  need  only 
structural  unity  to  make  them  a  great  poem. 
The  Spirit  of  Nature  has  seized  hold  upon 
him,  not  through  the  influence  of  Words- 
worth, as  some  suppose,  but  because  of  native 
propensity  and  enforced  disgust  with  the 
world  of  men ;  and  he  rises  to  the  supreme 
heights  of  descriptive  poetry.  Some  of  his 
stanzas  devoted  to  the  Alps  are  fairly  sublime 
with  passion.  He  does  not  penetrate  Nature,  as 
Wordsworth  does :  he  appropriates  her.  And 
he  almost  manages  to  move  without  tripping 
over  the  fields  of  history  and  criticism,  usu- 
ally so  foreign  to  him.  He  can  characterize 
Rousseau  and  Gibbon,  can  comprehend  the 
past  of  Italy  and  Rome,  and  can  fairly  con- 
quer his  normal  ineptitude  in  matters  of  art. 
As  for  the  noble  and  exquisite  land  in  which 
he  was  to  spend  his  exile,  he  almost  appro- 
priates her  as  he  does  Nature.  The  Italy  of 
Childe  Harold,  whatever  artistic  blemishes 
that  poem  may  have,  has  dominated  the 
229 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

world,  certainly  the  English  portion  of  it,  in 
a  manner  not  equalled  by  the  subtler  work 
of  Landor  or  Shelley  or  Browning.  It  is  this 
Italy  that  reappears  in  Parisina,  in  Bep- 
po,  in  The  Lament  of  Tasso,  in  The 
Prophecy  of  Dante,  in  the  Ode  on  Venice, 
in  certain  of  the  dramas  —  and  lends  charm 
to  them  all.  The  Lament  of  Tasso  has,  indeed, 
a  power  all  its  own  that  forestalls  Browning 
and  that  makes  one  question  why  it  is  not 
more  highly  esteemed ;  but  The  Two  Fos- 
cari  would  be  almost  unreadable  save  for 
the  passages  that  describe  its  hero's  passion 
for  Venice,  loveliest  of  cities. 

We  can  now  see  that  the  later  narrative  and 
descriptive  work  not  only  furnishes  fresh 
proof  of  Bryon's  astonishing  versatility,  but 
would  suffice,  without  Don  Juan,  to  give 
its  author  a  very  high,  though  not  the 
supreme  position  among  the  English  poets 
of  this  century.  But  the  entire  dramatic 
section  of  his  writings,  including  no  less 
than  eight  lyrical  dramas  and  tragedies, 
remains  to  be  considered. 

It  is  usual  to  dismiss  most  of  this  work  with 
positive  contempt;  but  I,  at  least,  must  agree 
with  Dr.  Garnett  in  believing  that  Byron 
has,  "  like  Dryden,  produced  memorable 
works  by  force  and  flexibility  of  genius."  I 
230 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

will  go  further  and  say,  that,  after  having 
just  re-read  them  all,  I  should  prefer  to  begin 
immediately  to  read  them  over  again  to 
being  forced  to  go  through  once  more  the 
entire  dramatic  work  of  Tennyson  or  Brown- 
ing. I  am  well  aware  that  Byron's  blank 
verse  is  often  execrable,  whether  through  his 
carelessness  or  his  incapacity  to  handle  that 
measure ;  I  know  that  only  that  precious 
product  of  open  plunder,  Werner,  suc- 
ceeded on  the  stage ;  I  admit  that  Byron's 
genius  was  essentially  non-dramatic,  that  his 
chief  characters  are  not  real  persons,  but 
ideal  personages  ;  —  I  admit  almost  anything, 
in  short,  except  the  claim  that  the  dramas 
are  total,  or  nearly  total,  failures.  Almost 
all  carry  interest;  all  show  force  and  versa- 
tility; not  one  is  lacking  in  passages  of 
passion ;  and  at  least  three  are,  with  all 
their  faults,  productions  not  to  be  matched 
in  the  works  of  any  of  Byron's  modern  rivals, 
save  Shelley.  These  three  are  Manfred, 
Cain,  and  Sardanapalus,  which  may  be 
set  beside  the  Prometheus  Unbound  and 
The  Cenci.  The  British  critics  have  almost 
unanimously  rendered  their  verdict  in  favor 
of  Shelley ;  and,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  technical  art,  they  are  doubtless  in 
the  right.  Yet  I  question  whether  the  sheer 
231 


THE  BYRON   REVIVAL 

vigor  of  Byron  does  not  balance  the  art  of 
Shelley  in  a  class  of  compositions  in  which 
neither  could  attain  perfection. 

But,  when  the  dramas  have  been  added  to 
the  lyrical,  narrative,  and  descriptive  work, 
to  vindicate  Byron's  claim  to  be  considered 
the  most  versatile  poetic  genius  of  modern 
England,  we  are  brought  full  upon  the 
masterpiece  which  of  itself  alone  might  suf- 
fice to  prove  the  truth  of  this  claim,  that 
wonderful  Don  Juan,  almost  the  only  mod- 
ern poem  of  which,  adapting  Shakspere, 
one  may  affirm  that  "  age  cannot  wither 
it  nor  custom  stale  its  infinite  variety." 
I  shall  say  little  more  about  it,  save  to  re- 
mark that  its  poetical  passages  have  a  richer 
tone  than  can  easily  be  found  elsewhere  in 
Byron's  own  work  or  in  that  of  his  rivals,  and 
that  its  fierce  denunciation  and  irresistible 
ridicule  of  cant  and  tyranny  ought  to  make 
it  and  its  pendant,  The  Vision  of  Judg- 
ment, almost,  if  not  quite,  the  master  poems 
of  modern  democracy.  Byron  was  a  revolted 
aristocrat,  it  is  true;  but  his  acquired  sym- 
pathy with  democratic  ideals,  especially  those 
of  America,  became  a  liberalizing  force  that 
can  hardly  be  overpraised  and  should  never 
be  forgotten.  We,  at  least,  the  countrymen 
of  the  Washington  he  extolled,  should  not  be 
232 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

ungrateful  to  his  memory ;  and  the  advocates 
of  peace  among  the  nations  should  hail  him 
as  their  most  effective  champion. 

But  the  reader  may  ask,  What  has  become 
of  the  vicious,  the  irreligious  Byron  of  our 
forefathers  —  the  author  of  the  blasphemous 
Cain  and  the  licentious  Don  Juan,  which 
no  self-respecting  man  ought  to  read?  An 
obvious  answer  to  this  question  would  be 
the  statement  that  he  never  existed,  save  in 
the  heated  imaginations  of  his  well-meaning, 
but  unintelligent,  countrymen.  Such  an 
answer,  however,  would  smack  partly  of  dis- 
ingenuousness.  It  is  true  that  the  "  monster 
of  wickedness  "  never  existed ;  but  it  is  also 
true  that  Byron,  by  his  conduct  and  his 
writings,  sketched  the  outlines  of  a  caricature 
which  his  countrymen  had  only  to  fill  in. 
The  high  praise  1  have  just  given  him  as  an 
apostle  of  liberty  and  peace  is  thoroughly 
deserved ;  and  he  died  a  martyr  for  freedom ; 
but  his  life  was  in  many  important  respects 
unworthy  and  low ;  his  character  was  soiled 
by  traits  of  vulgarity  and  vice;  and  his  writ- 
ings were  often  impure.  Time  has  naturally 
softened  us  toward  him ;  and  study  of  him 
and  his  age  has  convinced  us  that  there  was 
far  more  of  good  than  of  bad  in  him,  that 
much  extenuation  can  be  found  for  his  con- 
233 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

duct  and  the  impurity  of  his  writings :  but, 
while  we  judge  the  man  as  leniently  as  we 
can,  it  would  not  be  just  to  ourselves  if  we 
were  to  make  as  much  allowance  for  his  liter- 
ary work,  the  influence  of  which  lives  on. 
We  may,  indeed,  easily  dismiss  the  charge  of 
blasphemy ;  for  the  word  has  various  mean- 
ings at  various  periods  and  to  various  orders 
of  intelligence.  Byron  did  not  mean  to  be 
blasphemous ;  and  his  attitude  toward  Chris- 
tianity is  at  most  wavering,  not  positively 
sceptical  or  defiant.  To  eschew  his  poetry 
on  this  account,  in  an  age  that  tolerates  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward,  would  be  little  short  of 
ridiculous  in  any  person  of  even  semi-culture. 
The  charge  of  impurity  cannot  be  dis- 
missed so  easily,  although  it  would  hardly 
be  raised  against  a  foreign  writer.  Some  of 
his  earliest  verse  was  suppressed,  on  account 
of  its  sensual  tone,  by  his  kind  friend,  Mr. 
Beecher.  In  the  lyrical  and  narrative  work 
written  before  his  marriage  he  kept  this  vein 
under,  but  did  not  manage,  and  probably  did 
not  wish,  to  hide  its  existence.  In  the  better 
portions  of  Childe  Harold,  in  the  dramas, 
even  in  such  later  tales  as  Parisina,  it  would 
require  a  prying  purist  to  find  anything  seri- 
ously objectionable.  In  Beppo  and  Don 
Juan,  however,  he  gave  himself  a  loose  rein, 
234 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

in  spite  of  the  importunities  of  La  Guiccioli. 
He  took  delight  in  shocking  the  sense  of 
propriety  of  his  countrymen,  who  had  treated 
him  with  injustice;  but,  while  his  heartiest 
admirers  cannot  but  wish  that  he  had  not 
gone  so  far,  they  find  in  this  very  fact  not 
only  an  excuse  for  him,  but  a  safe  means  of 
rescuing  the  two  poems  from  the  mass  of  por- 
nographic and  lubricous  literature.  Certain 
scenes  and  passages  of  Don  Juan  are  not 
deliberate  efforts  to  corrupt :  they  are  rather 
the  ebullitions  of  a  coarse,  but  thoroughly 
sincere,  satirist,  bent  on  shocking  people  he 
despises.  The  wit,  the  verve,  the  humor,  the 
satire  that  are  explicit  or  implicit  in  almost 
every  stanza  save  Don  Juan  so  as  by  fire. 

The  London  of  the  Regency  naturally 
could  not  take  this  view  of  the  matter,  and 
sought  to  drown  its  own  shame  in  the  clamor 
that  it  raised  over  the  alleged  immorality  of  the 
new  poem  ;  but  choice  and  wholesome  spirits, 
like  Sir  Walter  Scott,  saw  that  Byron  had 
struck  his  true  vein,  and  cheered  him  on. 
As  the  cantos  proceeded,  he  held  himself  in 
more  and  more,  so  that  much  of  the  poem  is 
practically  unamenable  to  censure.  And  now 
that  time  has  removed  us  as  far  from  him  as 
he  was  from  Fielding,  it  would  seem  that 
only  those  who  are  peculiarly  sensitive  to  the 
235 


THE   BYRON   REVIVAL 

coarse,  and  peculiarly  insensitive  to  wit,  need 
be  warned  away  from  the  greatest  master- 
piece of  its  kind  in  any  literature. 

In  short,  just  as  an  age  that  tolerates  Mrs. 
Ward  need  not  fear  that  Byron  will  sap  its 
faith,  so  an  age  that  reads  without  abhor- 
rence certain  chapters  in  The  Manxman, 
in  Jude  the  Obscure,  and  in  Evelyn 
Innes,  cannot  with  consistency  put  Don 
Juan  beyond  the  pale.  Nor  should  an  age 
that  admires  brilliant  achievements  of  all 
kinds  long  withhold  its  praise  from  that  won- 
derfully passionate,  strong,  and  sincere  soul 
which,  after  uttering  itself  in  the  master  poem 
and  poetry  of  a  tremendous  epoch,  gave  itself 
up  a  willing  sacrifice  to  the  cause  of  human 
freedom  in  the  fatal  marshes  of  Missolonghi. 


236 


VII 

TEACHING  THE   SPIRIT  OF 
LITERATURE 


237 


VII 

TEACHING    THE   SPIRIT   OF 
LITERATURE. 

READERS  of  Balzac's  Une  Fille  d'Eve  will 
recall  his  description  of  the  depressing  edu- 
cation given  by  the  Countess  de  Granville 
to  her  two  young  daughters.  That  she  might 
make  smooth  their  path  to  heaven  and  matri- 
mony, she  subjected  them  to  a  regimen  that 
had  at  least  one  fatal  defect,  in  that  it  took  no 
account  of  their  emotions.  Its  results  may 
be  learned  from  the  story,  but  few  thoughtful 
readers  will  refrain  from  asking  themselves 
whether  our  educational  regimen  is  not  in 
too  many  cases  followed  by  results  similar 
in  kind,  if  not  in  degree. 

Parents  and  teachers  of  modern  America 
have  doubtless  quite  different  ideals  for  their 
children  from  those  of  the  Countess  de  Gran- 
ville, but  they  often  make  the  mistake  that 
she  did  of  pursuing  these  ideals  at  the  cost 
of  their  children's  emotions ;  that  is  to  say,  at 
the  cost  of  their  real  happiness.  The  ideals 
239 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

of  the  French  mother  were  summed  up  in 
the  word  convenance  ;  the  ideals  of  too  many 
American  mothers  and  fathers,  and,  I  regret 
to  add,  teachers,  are  summed  up  in  the  word 
"  utility."  Neither  set  of  ideals  takes  much 
account  of  those  emotions  which  are  the 
highest  part  of  our  nature,  and  are  most 
impressionable  in  childhood ;  for  the  world 
of  the  suitable  and  of  the  useful  is  the  world 
of  fact,  and  fact  has  to  be  transmuted  by  the 
imagination  before  it  can  reach  and  act  upon 
the  emotions.  It  follows,  then,  that  every 
educational  regimen  which  appeals  to  the 
mind  through  facts  should  be  supplemented 
by  one  which  appeals  to  the  soul  through 
ideas ;  that  is,  through  facts  transmuted  by 
the  imagination.  Hence  no  educational  sys- 
tem is  complete  that  does  not  include  instruc- 
tion in  religion  and  art,  the  two  chief  sources 
of  appeal  to  the  emotions.  For  obvious 
reasons  we  Americans  have  been  compelled 
to  leave  religion  outside  the  ordinary  school 
and  college  curriculum,  and  this  is  practically 
the  case  with  the  plastic  arts.  We  are  thus 
reduced  to  rely  mainly  on  literature  and 
music  as  sources  of  appeal  to  the  emotions 
of  our  youth,  but  we  have  hitherto  made 
insufficient  use  of  both. 

This  was  not  the  case  with  the  best  edu- 
240 


THE   SPIRIT   OF  LITERATURE 

cated  people  the  world  has  ever  known,  the 
Greeks.  Literature,  especially  poetry,  and 
music  were  the  basis  of  a  Greek  boy's  edu- 
cation, and  education  in  these  two  arts  (which 
it  must  be  remembered  were  closely  con- 
nected with  religion)  led  to  the  culmination 
of  all  the  other  arts  in  the  Athens  of  Pericles. 
But  the  Athens  of  Pericles  had  its  weakness 
as  well  as  its  strength,  and  the  world  has 
moved  forward  greatly  in  twenty-three  hun- 
dred years ;  hence  the  basis  of  a  boy's  edu- 
cation should  be  far  broader  now  than  it  was 
then.  Yet  while  broadening  the  base  and 
shifting  its  centre,  we  should  not  be  rash 
enough  to  cast  away  its  old  material.  Poetry 
and  music  are  still  essential  to  any  sound 
educational  system ;  and  this  being  so,  the 
inquiry  how  they  may  best  be  taught  is  of 
great  interest,  and,  if  confined  to  the  first 
named,  leads  to  the  main  topic  of  this 
paper. 

I  use  the  term  "poetry"  advisedly,  for 
it  best  represents  the  literature  of  the  imagi- 
nation, and  that  is  what  we  have  to  deal  with, 
as  we  shall  see  at  once  after  a  little  analysis. 
What  did  the  Greek  teacher  expect  his 
pupils  to  get  from  their  study  of  Homer? 
Probably  two  sets  of  good  results ;  one  affect- 
ing the  mind,  the  other  the  soul.  From  the 
16  241 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  the  Greek  boy  could 
derive  much  information  with  regard  to 
mythology,  genealogy,  and  so-called  history. 
They  served  also  as  reading-books,  and  for 
a  long  while  took  the  place  of  formal  gram- 
mars and  treatises  on  rhetoric.  In  other 
words,  they  were  to  him  a  storehouse  of 
facts.  But  they  also  filled  him  with  emotions 
of  pleasure.  They  charmed  his  ear  by  their 
cadences ;  they  charmed  his  inner  eye  by 
their  pictures ;  they  charmed  his  moral  na- 
ture by  the  examples  they  offered  him  of  sub- 
lime beauty  and  bravery  and  patriotism.  In 
short,  they  were  to  him  a  storehouse  of 
ideas ;  and  this,  in  the  eyes  of  his  teacher, 
was  doubtless  their  chief  value.  But  nowa- 
days we  need  not  use  poetry  as  a  storehouse 
of  facts,  and  we  need  to  use  literature  for 
this  purpose  only  so  far  as  a  good  style  helps 
in  the  presentation  of  facts,  as  for  example 
in  the  case  of  history.  With  our  long  list 
of  sciences,  natural  and  linguistic  and  moral, 
we  are  in  no  danger  of  ignoring  the  world 
of  facts,  and  are  therefore  free  to  use  litera- 
ture, especially  poetry,  in  order  to  appeal  to 
the  emotions  of  youth.  Hence,  in  inquiring 
how  we  may  best  teach  literature,  we  are  really 
inquiring  how  we  may  best  teach  the  litera- 
ture of  the  imagination, — that  is,  poetry  in 
242 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE 

a  wide  sense ;  for  it  would  seem  that  litera- 
ture used  as  a  storehouse  of  facts  might  be 
taught  like  any  other  subject  in  the  domain 
of  fact. 

But  some  one  may  ask,  While  all  this  is 
true  enough,  what  has  it  to  do  with  the  prac- 
tical teaching  of  literature?  I  answer  that  it 
has  everything  to  do  with  it.  If  the  chief 
reason  for  teaching  literature  be  the  fact  that 
we  shall  thereby  best  appeal  to  the  emotions, 
what  is  one  to  say  of  the  amount  of  time 
given  to  the  study  of  the  history  of  literature, 
and  to  those  critical,  philological,  and  histori- 
cal annotations  that  fill  most  of  our  literary 
textbooks?  The  history  of  literature  is  im- 
portant enough,  but  it  belongs  to  the  domain 
of  fact ;  it  does  not  appeal  primarily  to  the 
emotions.  It  is  well  for  a  child  to  know  the 
names  of  great  books  and  their  authors;  it 
is  just  as  well  that  he  should  not  say  that 
Fielding  wrote  Tom  Jones's  Cabin  or  that 
Telemachus  was  a  great  French  preacher  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  as  I  have  known 
university  students  to  do.  But  if  the  history 
of  literature  really  appealed  to  the  emotions, 
if  it  vitally  affected  any  pupil,  would  he  make 
such  mistakes?  The  history  of  literature  be- 
longs to  the  domain  of  fact  just  as  much  as 
geography  does,  and  the  ability  on  the  part 
243 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE 

of  a  child  to  reel  off  the  names  of  authors 
and  their  dates  is  just  as  useless  as  his  ability 
to  tell  the  capital  of  Bolivia  or  to  draw  a  map 
of  Afghanistan.  A  certain  amount  of  infor- 
mation about  books  and  writers  is  useful,  — 
the  amount  given  in  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's 
and  Professor  Richardson's  primers  and  in 
Mr.  Brander  Matthews's  volume  on  American 
literature,  —  but  not  a  bit  more ;  for  as  in- 
tellectual training  the  history  of  literature  is 
not  nearly  so  efficient  as  many  another 
study. 

But  if  teaching  the  history  of  literature  be 
beside  the  mark,  if  we  wish  to  reach  the 
emotions,  what  are  we  to  say  of  criticism  ?  I 
cannot  see  that  we  can  say  anything  different. 
That  pupil  of  mine  who  called  Cowper's  lines 
on  the  receipt  of  his  mother's  picture  out  of 
Norfolk  an  "  ode  "  made  an  absurd  mistake,  but 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  he  would  have  been 
essentially  better  or  happier  if  he  had  not 
made  it.  Critical  appreciation  is  certainly 
better  than  uncritical,  but,  after  all,  apprecia- 
tion is  the  main  thing,  and  must  precede 
criticism.  Just  how  much  critical,  philologi- 
cal, and  historical  elucidation  is  needed  to 
make  a  poem  intelligible  —  for  of  course  it 
has  to  be  apprehended  intellectually  before 
it  can  produce  its  full  emotional  effect  —  is  a 
244 


THE   SPIRIT  OF   LITERATURE 

hard  matter  to  decide,  but  I  am  sure  that  the 
amount  varies  with  the  ages  of  the  pupils. 
The  younger  the  pupils,  the  simpler  and  less 
numerous  the  teacher's  comments  should  be ; 
for  he  has  no  right  to  be  dealing  with  an  ob- 
scure poem,  and  he  must  remember  that  he 
is  not,  or  should  not  be,  trying  to  teach  his 
pupils  facts.  I  am  forced  to  conclude,  then, 
that  the  common  practice  of  putting  into  the 
hands  of  pupils  a  certain  number  of  fully  an- 
notated classics,  with  the  understanding  that 
the  unfortunate  pupils  are  to  be  examined  on 
the  numerous  facts  contained  in  the  notes  and 
introductions,  whatever  may  be  claimed  for  it 
by  college  associations  or  by  the  editors  of 
such  books,  is  not  the  very  best  way  of  using 
literature  as  an  appeal  to  the  emotions  of  the 
young.  Criticism,  philology,  and  history  are 
admirable  handmaids  to  literature,  but  they 
are  not  literature,  and  they  will  not  help  us 
much  in  an  appeal  to  the  emotions.  To 
make  this  appeal  we  must  bring  pupils 
in  contact  with  the  body  of  literature,  and 
here  is  the  crucial  point  of  the  problem  be- 
fore us. 

But  is  not  this  to  play  into  the  hands  of 
men   like  the  late   Professor   Freeman,  who 
opposed  the  establishment  of  a  Chair  of  Lit- 
erature at  Oxford  on  the  plea  that  we  cannot 
245 


THE   SPIRIT   OF  LITERATURE 

examine  on  tastes  and  sympathies?  If  we  are 
to  make  a  minimum  use  of  criticism,  philo- 
logy, and  history,  what  manner  of  examina- 
tion shall  we  be  able  to  set  our  classes  in 
literature?  To  this  question  Mr.  Churton 
Collins  replied  that  we  ought  to  examine  on 
Aristotle,  Longtnus,  Quintilian,  and  Lessing ; 
that  is  to  say,  on  criticism.  A  very  good  an- 
swer so  far  as  university  students  are  con- 
cerned. The  history  and  theory  of  literary 
composition,  especially  of  poetry,  should  be 
included  in  every  well-organized  curriculum, 
and  any  competent  teacher  can  examine  on 
them.  But  though  these  studies  may  chasten 
the  emotions,  they  do  not  primarily  appeal 
to  or  awaken  them,  and  for  the  purposes  of 
the  elementary  teacher  they  are  almost  use- 
less. Are  such  teachers,  then,  to  be  debarred 
from  making  use  of  those  departments  of  lit- 
erary study  that  admit  of  being  tested  by  ex- 
amination? I  answer,  Yes,  so  far  as  their 
main  work  is  concerned.  A  small  amount 
of  literary  history  may  be  required  and  pu- 
pils may  be  examined  on  it,  and  perhaps  a 
tiny  amount  of  criticism,  but  for  the  most 
part  school  classes  in  literature  should  go 
scot-free  from  examination. 

This  will  seem  a  hard  saying  to  teachers 
enamored  of  school  machinery,  —  who  teach 
246 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

by  cut-and-dried  methods,  and  regard  the 
school-day  as  a  clock  face,  with  the  recita- 
tion hours  corresponding  to  the  figures,  and 
themselves  and  their  pupils  to  the  hands. 
But  the  literary  spirit  and  the  mechanical 
spirit  have  long  been  sworn  enemies,  for 
machinery  has  no  emotions;  so,  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  paper,  we  need  hardly  consider 
the  mechanical  teacher,  who  had  best  keep 
his  hands  off  literature.  The  born  teacher, 
the  teacher  with  a  soul,  —  and  I  am  optimist 
enough  to  believe  that  many  of  the  men  and 
women  in  this  country  who  are  wearing  their 
lives  away  in  the  cause  of  education  belong 
to  this  category,  —  will  be  glad  to  believe 
that  there  is  at  least  one  important  study  that 
need  not  and  should  not  be  pursued  mechani- 
cally. The  trouble  will  be  not  so  much  with 
the  pupils  and  teachers  as  with  the  parents 
and  statisticians,  who  want  marks  and  grades, 
and  that  sort  of  partly  necessary,  partly  hope- 
less thing.  Now  I  have  not  the  slightest  idea 
how  a  child  can  be  graded  or  marked  on  his 
emotions,  yet  I  am  sure  that  all  teaching  of 
literature  that  is  worthy  the  name  takes  ac- 
count of  these  chiefly.  If  this  be  true,  should 
we  not  be  brave  enough  to  let  the  machinery 
go,  and  confine  ourselves  to  the  one  pertinent 
and  eternal  question,  How  young  souls  can 
247 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

be  best  brought  in  contact  with  the  spirit  of 
literature  ? 

If  I  may  judge  from  my  experience  with 
college  work,  covering  several  years,  and 
from  my  briefer  experience  with  school 
work,  I  am  forced  to  the  conclusion  that 
sympathetic  reading  on  the  part  of  the 
teacher  should  be  the  main  method  of  pre- 
senting literature,  especially  poetry,  to 
young  minds.  I  have  never  got  good  re- 
sults from  the  history  of  literature  or  from 
criticism  except  in  the  case  of  matured  stu- 
dents, and  I  never  expect  to.  I  have  exa- 
mined hundreds  of  papers  in  the  endeavor  to 
find  out  what  facts  or  ideas  connected  with 
literature  appeal  most  to  the  young,  and  I 
have  found  that  in  eight  out  of  ten  cases  it 
is  the  trivial  or  the  bizarre.  I  remember  a 
curious  instance  in  point.  I  had  been  using 
Gosse's  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Lit- 
erature, and  I  asked  my  class  to  give  a  brief 
account  of  the  life  of  Alexander  Pope.  Judge 
of  my  astonishment  when  I  found  that  three 
fourths  of  a  large  class  had,  without  collusion, 
and  no  matter  what  the  merits  of  the  indivi- 
dual paper,  copied  verbatim  the  following 
sentence :  "  Pope,  with  features  carved  as  if 
in  ivory,  and  with  the  great  melting  eyes  of 
an  antelope,  carried  his  brilliant  head  on  a 
248 


THE   SPIRIT  OF   LITERATURE 

deformed  and  sickly  body."  Fortunately,  in 
this  case  the  trivial  facts  retained  were  rightly 
applied.  In  another  case  I  was  gravely  in- 
formed that  the  poet  Collins  died  "  of  a 
silk-bag  shop,"  information  that  completely 
staggered  me  until  I  found  that  Mr.  Gosse, 
innocent  of  any  intention  to  mislead,  had 
stated  that  Sterne  died  in  "  lodgings  over 
a  silk-bag  shop."  I  need  hardly  cite  further 
examples  of  utter  and  ridiculous  confusion  of 
names,  for  such  examples  are  familiar  to  all 
teachers  of  experience.  What  I  need  to 
point  out  is  that  these  mistakes  are  due,  not 
to  the  stupidity  of  our  pupils  or  to  our  own 
bad  teaching,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  history 
of  literature  is  drier  than  mineralogy  to  any 
one  who  is  not  already  fairly  well  read. 
Much  the  same  thing  may  be  said  of  criti- 
cism, only  the  chances  of  making  mistakes 
are  magnified  through  the  elusive  nature  of 
the  subject.  It  is  well,  certainly,  to  give  a 
child  some  interesting  information  about 
great  authors,  and  to  try  to  teach  him  the 
distinctions  between  the  broader  categories 
of  literature;  but  after  this  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  primary  and  secondary  teachers 
should  rely  mainly  upon  sympathetic  read- 
ing. Certainly  this  is  my  experience  with 
younger  students.  Whenever  I  find  their  at- 
249 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

tention  flagging,  I  begin  to  read,  and  make 
my  comments  as  brief  as  possible.  In  this 
way  I  have  reached  men  who  seemed  at  first 
sight  to  be  hopeless.  My  most  signal  suc- 
cess was  when  I  involuntarily  set  a  baseball 
pitcher  to  committing  certain  sonnets  of 
Shakspere  to  memory,  while  he  was  rest- 
ing from  practising  new  curves.  I  have  al- 
ways been  proud  of  that  achievement,  but  I 
believe  it  would  be  a  by  no  means  unusual 
one  if  teachers  generally  would  criticise  less 
and  read  more.  The  teacher  must,  of  course, 
read  sympathetically,  or  the  result  will  be 
far  from  good.  He  must  read  with  sincerity 
and  enthusiasm  and  understanding,  and  with 
critical  judgment.  To  try  Browning's  Red 
Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  on  a  class  of 
freshmen  would  be  simply  silly.  To  abstain 
from  reading  Byron  to  them  on  account  of 
Mr.  Saintsbury's  recent  utterances  on  the 
subject  of  his  lordship's  poetry  would  be 
equally  silly.  But  there  is,  fortunately,  a 
large  amount  of  English  and  American  po- 
etry that  is  both  noble  and  suitable  to  the 
comprehension  of  young  minds.  Where 
Emerson's  Brahma  will  prove  incompre- 
hensible, his  Concord  Hymn  will  stir 
genuinely  patriotic  emotions. 

It  will  be  perceived  that  I  am  throwing  a 
250 


THE  SPIRIT  OF   LITERATURE 

great  deal  of  responsibility  on  the  teacher; 
and  I  think  this  is  right,  for  the  emotions  of 
his  pupils  are  like  the  strings  of  an  instru- 
ment which  he  is  to  touch  into  life.  After  a 
while  his  intermediation  will  become  less 
necessary,  but  at  first  it  is  essential  in  most 
cases.  In  spite  of  what  many  critics  say,  it 
is  a  fact  that  with  a  majority  of  children 
whatever  literary  appreciation  they  may  have 
lies  dormant  until  it  is  awakened  by  some 
skilful  hand.  It  is  better  that  this  hand 
should  be  the  teacher's,  if  only  for  the  reason 
that  the  performance  of  such  a  service  will 
add  a  pleasure  to  many  a  life  wearied  with 
the  daily  rounds  of  mechanical  duty.  I  am 
sure  that  there  is  no  teacher,  man  or  woman, 
who  would  not  be  glad  to  have  a  half-hour 
set  apart  in  each  school-day  in  which  arith- 
metics and  grammars  could  be  laid  aside, 
and  some  favorite  volume  of  poetry  brought 
out  from  the  desk  and  read  with  sympathy 
and  enthusiasm.  If  I  had  a  private  school  of 
my  own,  I  should  surely  snatch  the  time  for 
this,  even  if  I  had  to  have  fewer  maps  drawn 
and  fewer  examples  in  partial  payments 
worked.  By  the  power  of  music  Amphion 
built  the  walls  of  Thebes ;  by  the  power  of 
poetic  harmony  we  can  try  to  build  up  the 
characters  of  our  pupils.  "  What  passion  can- 
251 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   LITERATURE 

not  music  raise  and  quell? "asked  Dryden, 
and  we  may  ask  the  same  question  with  re- 
gard to  poetry.  I  have  so  much  belief  in 
the  power  of  the  "  concord  of  sweet  sounds  " 
that  I  am  inclined  to  say  that  many  pupils 
will  receive  benefit  from  merely  hearing  great 
poetry  read,  even  though  it  may  not  convey 
much  meaning  to  their  minds.  Take,  for 
example,  this  magnificent  passage  from 
Lycidas : 

"Ay  me !  whilst  thee  the  shores  and  sounding  seas 
Wash  far  away,  where'er  thy  bones  are  hurled, 
Whether  beyond  the  stormy  Hebrides, 
Where  thou  perhaps  under  the  whelming  tide 
Visit'st  the  bottom  of  the  monstrous  world ; 
Or  whether  thou,  to  our  moist  vows  denied, 
Sleep'st  by  the  fable  of  Bellerus  old, 
Where  the  great  vision  of  the  guarded  mount 
Looks  toward  Namancos  and  Bayona's  hold ; 
Look  homeward,  Angel,  now,  and  melt  with  ruth, 
And,  O  ye  dolphins,  waft  the  hapless  youth." 

For  the  elucidation  of  these  eleven  lines  I 
felt  compelled  to  give  recently  nearly  three 
pages  of  notes,  over  one  page  being  con- 
cerned with  the  single  word  "Angel."  Now 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  average  schoolboy 
would  have  any  clear  notion  as  to  who  this 
Angel  was,  or  as  to  what  Bellerus  or  Naman- 
cos meant,  but  I  think  that  the  noble  picture 
of  the  corpse  of  Lycidas  washed  by  the 
252 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE 

sounding  seas  would  appeal  profoundly  to 
his  imagination,  and  that  he  would  be  the 
better  for  having  heard  his  teacher  read  the 
lines.  That  he  would  be  the  better  for  nine 
out  of  ten  of  the  critical  and  philological  an- 
notations that  editors  are  constrained  to  make 
on  the  passage  I  see  grave  reason  to  doubt. 
The  fact  is  that  we  have  let  the  teacher  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics  affect  us  by  methods 
of  minute  analysis  better  fitted  to  the  study 
of  a  dead  than  of  a  living  language.  These 
same  classical  teachers  have,  too,  not  a  little 
to  answer  for,  on  account  of  the  slight  which 
time  out  of  mind  they  have  put  on  the  purely 
literary  side  of  their  work.  How  many 
teachers  of  Latin,  when  reading  Virgil,  stop 
to  comment  on  the  sonorous  quality  of  such 
a  grand  verse  as 

"  Infandum,  regina,  jubes  renovare  dolorem," 
or  upon  this  verse  of  Horace's, 

"  Cras  ingens  iterabimus  aequor," 

which  suggests  comparison  at  once  with 
Shakspere's  "  multitudinous  seas,"  or  with 
Matthew  Arnold's 

"The  unplumb'd,  salt,  estranging  sea"? 

But  the  mention  of  Arnold   reminds   me 
that  the  stress  I  am  laying  on  sympathetic 
253 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE 

reading  of  poetry  by  the  teacher  is  merely 
an  amplification  of  his  advice  that  we  should 
keep  passages  of  great  poetry  in  our  minds, 
to  serve  as  touchstones  (perhaps  tuning-forks 
would  be  a  more  accurate  though  less  elegant 
metaphor)  that  will  enable  us  to  detect  the 
presence  or  absence  of  truly  poetic  qualities 
in  the  verse  we  read.  I  should  add  also  that 
this  method  of  study  is  strictly  in  line  with 
the  best  modern  ideas ;  for  pupils  should  be 
put  in  touch  with  a  subject  as  a  whole  before 
they  are  set  to  studying  its  parts. 

There  are  many  other  things  that  I  should 
like  to  say,  did  space  permit.  I  should  like 
to  protest  against  the  use  of  great  literature 
for  exercises  in  parsing  or  for  etymological 
or  philological  investigations ;  it  ought  even 
to  be  sparingly  used  for  the  purposes  of  read- 
ing-classes. I  should  like  to  protest  against 
the  lack  of  judgment  shown  by  teachers  and 
college  professors  in  the  texts  they  assign  for 
study,  —  two  books  of  Pope's  Iliad,  for  exam- 
ple, in  place  of  his  Rape  of  the  Lock, — 
a  matter,  however,  in  which  we  teachers  of 
English  are  so  far  ahead  of  our  friends  who 
teach  French  and  German  that  perhaps  I 
ought  to  be  thankful  for  the  progress  we 
have  made.  I  should  like  finally  to  insist 
upon  what  I  believe  will  some  day  be  gen- 
254 


THE   SPIRIT  OF  LITERATURE 

erally  recognized, — the  supremacy  of  litera- 
ture as  a  study  over  all  others  that  now 
occupy  the  world's  attention.  For  when 
everything  is  said,  it  is  literature,  and  espe- 
cially poetry,  that  has  the  first  and  the  un- 
disputed right  to  enter  the  audience-chamber 
of  the  human  soul.  Painting,  sculpture, 
music,  the  whole  noble  list  of  the  sciences, 
the  lower  but  still  important  useful  arts,  may 
and  must  continue  to  appeal  and  minister  to 
the  spirit  of  man ;  but  artistic  prose  and 
poetry  are  the  servants,  —  nay,  are  they  not 
rather  the  masters?  —  on  which  that  spirit 
has  relied  from  the  beginning  of  time,  and 
on  which  it  will  rely  till  time  itself  shall 
end. 


255 


VIII 
MR.   HOWELLS  AND    ROMANTICISM 


257 


VIII 

MR.   HOWELLS    AND    ROMAN- 
TICISM 

MR.  WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS  recently  had 
occasion  to  speak  a  good  word  for  the  fiction 
that  is  being  produced  in  our  Southern 
States,  but  he  prefaced  his  remarks  by  some 
uncomplimentary  references  to  romantic  fic- 
tion and  to  the  Southern  novelists,  like  Simms, 
Kennedy,  and  Esten  Cooke,  that  wrote  it. 
His  exact  words  were :  "  I  know  that  there 
were  before  the  war  novelists  in  South  Caro- 
lina, in  Maryland,  and  in  Virginia  deeply 
imbued  with  what  our  poor  Spanish  friends 
call  the  Walter-Scottismo,  not  to  say  the 
Fenimore-Cooperismo,  of  an  outdated  fashion 
of  the  world's  fiction.  But  I  have  never  read 
one  of  their  books,  and  I  should  be  able  to 
say  what  they  were  like  only  at  second  hand." 
It  was  extremely  proper  for  Mr.  Howells 
to  refrain  from  discussing  Simms,  Kennedy, 
and  Cooke,  since  he  confessedly  knows 
nothing  about  them,  but  was  it  proper  for 
259 


ROMANTICISM 

him  to  refer  to  them  in  quite  the  tone  he 
used?  Mr.  Howells  is  too  true  a  man  to  be 
arrogant,  but  sometimes  his  criticism  is  so 
aggressively  modern  that  it  falls  little  short 
of  arrogance.  There  is  surely  no  need  of 
speaking  of  the  fiction  of  sixty  years  ago  as 
one  would  of  a  worn-out  coat  It  may  be 
old-fashioned,  but  literary  as  well  as  other 
fashions  are  known  to  revive,  and  the  material 
of  a  novel,  which  is  human  nature,  does  not 
unravel  or  become  moth-eaten  as  the  material 
of  a  coat  does.  Besides,  no  one  wears  an 
old  coat  who  is  not  obliged  to,  while  thou- 
sands of  quite  intelligent  people  still  enjoy 
and  read  the  romances  their  fathers  read,  and 
a  whole  school  of  writers  has  arisen  whose 
aim  is  to  break  away  from  the  realistic  fiction 
Mr.  Howells  writes  and  advocates. 

I  am  not  at  all  disposed  to  blame  Mr. 
Howells  for  praising  the  fiction  he  likes ;  all 
I  claim  is  that  it  is  uncatholic  in  him  not  to 
have  a  good  word  to  say  for  writers  who 
endeavored  to  do  for  their  day  what  he  is 
doing  so  well  for  his.  His  canon  of  criticism 
seems  to  be  that  what  pleases  the  present  is 
all  a  man  need  consider ;  quite  as  sure,  if  not 
a  surer  canon  would  be  that  there  is  some 
good  in  whatever  has  thoroughly  pleased  the 
bygone  generations  of  men.  Then,  again, 
260 


ROMANTICISM 

if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  theory  of  evolution, 
the  fiction  of  to-day  must  have  been  evolved 
out  of  the  fiction  of  yesterday;  hence  the 
latter  can  hardly  be  foolish  if  the  former  be 
good,  and  present-day  writers  ought  at  least 
to  cultivate  the  virtue  of  gratitude. 

But  is  there  any  reason  why  a  person  who 
can  enjoy  as  I  have  just  done  Mr.  Howells's 
delightful  Story  of  a  Play  should  not  be 
able  to  read  with  pleasure,  as  I  did  long 
since  Simms's  Eutaw,  Kennedy's  Horse-Shoe 
Robinson  and  Cooke's  Virginia  Comedians? 
Perhaps  there  is  one  rather  effective  reason, 
the  fact  that  many  people  have  an  im- 
perfect sympathy  with  the  past.  This  is 
one  of  the  chief  reasons  why  such  a  poem 
as  Paradise  Lost  is  so  little  read  to-day; 
but  would  it  not  be  foolish  to  argue 
that  great  poem's  worthlessness  from  its 
paucity  of  readers  ?  Mr.  Howells,  of  course, 
does  not  argue  at  all  about  the  worthlessness  of 
ante  bellum  Southern  fiction,  but  the  way  in 
which  he  passes  it  over  suggests  that  if  he 
did  argue,  his  argument  would  be  based  upon 
the  inapplicability  of  that  fiction  to  present 
conditions — which  is  tantamount  to  ignoring 
the  fact  that  it  is  possible  to  get  a  great  deal 
of  pleasure  out  of  any  good  artistic  product 
of  the  past  if  we  can  put  ourselves  in  touch 
261 


ROMANTICISM 

with  it.  But  that  thousands  of  people  can 
do  this  is  a  matter  of  every-day  experience, 
hence  it  would  be  more  becoming  in  the 
friends  of  realism  to  acknowledge  with 
Horatio  —  for  that  gentleman  was  doubtless 
wise  enough  to  agree  with  Hamlet  —  that 
there  are  more  things  than  are  dreamed  of 
in  their  philosophy.  There  are  some  good 
things,  however,  in  Mr.  Howells's  philosophy, 
and  I  shall  now  try  to  show  what  these  are. 

When  Mr.  Howells,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, endeavors  to  divert  readers  from 
the  older  romances,  he  shows  himself,  I 
think,  to  be  an  uncatholic  critic ;  but  in  so 
far  as  his  remarks  affect  latter-day  writers, 
they  seem  to  me  to  be  altogether  admirable. 
There  can  be  no  question  that  the  art  of  fiction 
has  developed ;  there  is  equally  no  question 
that  those  who  write  it  to-day  ought  to  be 
abreast  of  the  art  they  practise.  The  realistic 
work  of  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Daudet,  Zola,  Tol- 
stoi, Hardy  and  Howells  has  made  it  impossi- 
ble for  readers,  not  in  fair  sympathy  with  the 
past,  to  tolerate  much  of  the  crude  work  of 
sixty  years  ago.  This  is  as  it  should  be,  and 
if  the  art  of  fiction  develop,  the  writers  of 
realistic  fiction  who  are  the  masters  to-day  will 
be  left  behind  in  their  turn,  except  in  the  case 
of  such  comprehensive  geniuses  as  Balzac. 
262 


ROMANTICISM 

But  if  this  be  true,  are  not  writers  wast- 
ing their  time,  if,  in  revolt  against  present 
methods,  they  throw  themselves  back  upon 
past  methods  without  having  profited  from 
the  teachings  of  contemporary  masters? 
They  may  gain  readers,  of  course,  and  if 
they  have  no  other  end  in  view  their  revolt 
is  justified ;  but  if  they  are  conscientious 
artists,  are  they  not  making  a  mistake?  For 
example,  what  permanent  place  in  literature 
can  the  increasing  swarm  of  men  and  women 
who  are  imitating  Mr.  Stanley  Weyman 
expect  to  have  ?  They  have  profited  a  little 
in  point  of  style  from  the  later  masters,  their 
knowledge  of  history  and  archaeology  is 
greater  than  that  of  the  romancers  of  two 
generations  ago,  but  they  surely  do  not  in 
most  cases  succeed  in  keeping  their  books 
from  being  mere  tours  de  force.  Almost 
every  day  a  new  historical  romance  comes 
to  my  table  —  now  the  scene  is  laid  in  the 
Italy  of  the  fourteenth  century,  now  in  the 
France  of  the  thirteenth ;  now  it  is  in  Wales, 
now  in  the  Faroe  Islands.  Nearly  always 
the  story  is  told  by  the  chief  actor,  who  has 
hairbreadth  escapes  in  plenty  —  in  which 
neither  author  nor  reader  ought  normally 
to  take  much  interest,  for  they  seem  to  be 
utterly  factitious.  How  much  more  good 
263 


ROMANTICISM 

these  authors  would  be  doing  if  they  would 
only  write  as  well  as  they  could  about  the 
life  around  them. 

The  early  romancers  did  not  do  this,  to  be 
sure,  but  they  did  do  something  their  modern 
imitators  cannot  do  —  they  breathed  the 
spirit  of  romance,  which  was  in  the  air  of 
their  times,  into  their  souls  and  practically 
lived  by  it.  The  romantic  thus  became  al- 
most the  real  to  them,  and  hence  their  works 
represented  them  truly.  But  there  is  no 
genuine  spirit  of  romanticism  abroad  to-day ; 
life  was  never  more  real  and  strenuous  and 
earnest;  hence  our  latter-day  romancers  do 
not  give  out  what  they  breathe  in.  Their 
romanticism  is  artificial,  factitious;  it  is  the 
product  of  a  literary  fad  which  is  itself  the 
product  of  a  premature  literary  revolt.  Cer- 
tainly realism  when  it  passed  into  naturalism 
went  too  far  and  a  revolt  was  needed ;  but  it 
seems  a  pity  that  the  revolters  should  not 
have  gone  back  to  sound  realism  and  made  a 
new  departure  from  it.  Men  who  have  lost 
their  way  try  to  strike  their  path  again  at  the 
point  of  divergence ;  they  do  not  make  for  a 
deserted  camp  and  pursue  a  backward  trail 
therefrom.  But  this  is  just  what  our  recent 
romancers  have  been  doing,  and  if  in  any 
way  Mr.  Howells's  criticisms  can  show  them 
264 


ROMANTICISM 

the  folly  of  their  course  I  trust  that  every 
word  he  writes  will  be  seriously  pondered. 
What  I  have  just  been  saying  will  receive  con- 
siderable illustration  from  a  cursory  examina- 
tion of  one  of  the  most  delightful  books  of 
Daudet  —  his  autobiographic  romance,  Le 
Petit  Chose  (Little  What  's-His-Name).  The 
first  part  of  this  story  is  realistic  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  term ;  that  is,  it  sticks  close 
to  the  facts  of  experience  while  treating  them 
in  an  idealistic  way.  Mere  realism,  not  shot 
through  with  idealism,  soon  degenerates  into 
naturalism,  and  is  as  unpleasant  as  an  entirely 
unideal  character  is  in  real  life.  It  was  al- 
ways impossible  for  Daudet  to  write  without 
idealizing,  but  in  the  first  part  of  Le  Petit 
Chose  his  ideal  picture  of  his  boyhood  was 
a  true  picture,  which  lost  nothing  by  being 
pure  at  the  same  time. 

In  the  second  part  of  his  story,  however, 
while  not  ceasing  to  be  idealistic,  he  did 
cease  to  be  realistic  and  became  romantic  in 
a  high  degree.  He  left  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence behind,  with  the  result  that  his  story 
lost  both  force  and  charm.  He  failed  to 
give  a  picture  of  Bohemian  Paris  that  would 
at  all  compare  with  those  of  Balzac  or  even 
with  those  which  he  himself  gave  later.  He 
weakened  his  leading  character  and  made  the 
265 


ROMANTICISM 

others  either  pathetic  or  commonplace.  And 
all  this  resulted  from  the  fact  that  when  he 
ceased  to  rely  upon  his  personal  experiences, 
his  feet  ceased  to  rest  upon  the  solid  ground, 
and  he  began  flitting  like  a  pretty  butterfly. 
If  he  had  written  a  generation  earlier,  we 
should  not  have  felt  the  weakness,  for  his 
story  would  have  been  all  of  a  piece,  and 
would  have  represented  the  best  he  had  to 
give.  Writing  in  1868,  however,  he  failed 
to  profit  by  the  example  set  by  Balzac,  and 
it  was  some  time  before  he  realized  his 
mistake. 

This  book  of  Daudet's,  then,  illustrates 
admirably  the  fact  that  in  an  unromantic  age 
it  is  useless  to  attempt  to  depart  from  the 
canons  of  true  realism.  These  canons  de- 
manded that  Daudet  should  keep  his  eye  on 
both  real  and  ideal  life,  and  that  he  should 
not  write  merely  a  pretty  and  pathetic  story 
ending  in  a  happy  marriage  literally  forced 
upon  a  ne'er-do-well  by  the  singularly  impru- 
dent father  of  a  much  forgiving  damsel. 
Later  in  his  life,  Daudet,  having  learned  the 
value  of  true  realism,  regretted  that  he  had 
written  Le  Petit  Chose,  for  he  felt  that  he 
could  have  turned  his  youthful  experiences 
to  better  account.  Perhaps  he  was  wrong  in 
this ;  at  least,  it  is  certain  that  the  first  half, 
266 


ROMANTICISM 

in  which  he  did  not  aim  at  romantic  effects, 
is  one  of  the  most  perfect  descriptions  of  the 
checkered  experience  of  a  child  and  youth 
that  can  be  found  in  literature.  And  it  has 
these  merits  because  it  is  true  to  facts  rather 
than  to  mere  desires.  The  romancer  consults 
desires,  and  so  builds  air  castles  in  which  the 
active  men  and  women  of  to-day  do  not  care 
to  tarry.  The  naturalist,  forgetting  the  ideal, 
is  only  too  likely  to  construct  sties  in  which 
no  clean-minded  person  will  feel  comfortable 
for  a  moment.  The  true  realist  builds  a  solid 
and  substantial  house  in  which  the  intelli- 
gent reader  delights  to  linger.  Thus  we  per- 
ceive that  when  Mr.  Howells  praises  realism 
he  is  doing  all  writers  of  fiction  a  service,  al- 
though we  need  not,  as  readers,  agree  with 
his  slighting  remarks  with  regard  to  the 
romances  that  delighted  our  grandfathers. 


267 


IX 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET   ONCE 
MORE 


269 


IX 

TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 
ONCE   MORE. 

I  HAD  just  ceased  reading,  a  few  weeks  since, 
the  interesting  but  rather  bulky  volumes 
which  the  present  Lord  Tennyson  has  de- 
voted to  the  memory  of  his  distinguished 
father,  when  chance  led  me  to  examine  in 
succession  two  yellow-backed  books  pub- 
lished this  year  in  Paris  (1897).  They  were 
M.  Paul  Marieton's  Une  Histoire  d'Amour 
and  the  letters  of  George  Sand  to  Alfred  de 
Musset  and  to  Ste.  Beuve,  with  an  intro- 
duction by  M.  S.  Rocheblave.  No  contrast 
could  have  been  greater  than  that  afforded 
by  the  severe  restraint  of  the  Tennyson 
memoir  and  the  utter  abandon  of  the  two 
latest  contributions  to  the  history  of  the  most 
famous  love  affair  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  impulse  to  draw  a  sort  of  Plutarchian 
parallel  was  almost  irresistible,  and  equally 
potent  was  the  desire  to  read  once  more 
Taine's  well-known  comparison  of  Tennyson 
271 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

and  Musset  in  the  last  chapter  of  his   His- 
toire  de  la  Litterature  Anglaise. 

We  all  remember  how  Taine  contrasted 
the  two  poets  and  the  respective  publics  for 
which  they  wrote,  and  we  recall  the  impres- 
sionist note  with  which  he  closed  what  he 
tried  to  make  a  rigidly  scientific  work  —  "  but 
I  prefer  Alfred  de  Musset."  We  can  most  of 
us  probably,  if  we  were  under  Tennyson's  in- 
fluence when  we  read  these  words  —  and  who 
of  us  was  not  in  those  golden  days? — re- 
member the  fine  scorn  we  felt  for  the  French- 
man who  had  the  audacity  to  maintain  that 
his  country,  land  of  broken-backed  Alexan- 
drines as  it  was,  had  produced  a  poet  worthy 
of  being  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with 
the  author  of  CEnone,  Maud,  and  Elaine. 
This  fine  scorn  which  we  felt  then  has 
lingered  on  with  some  people,  and  actu- 
ally intrudes  itself  into  the  appendix  to 
the  second  volume  of  the  Tennyson  memoir, 
where  the  late  Professor  Palgrave  permitted 
himself  to  speak  of  M.  Taine  as  a  "  lively 
critic."  But  to  those  of  us  who  have  been 
allowed  to  see  the  error  of  our  way  through 
our  reading  of  Hugo,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  and 
Musset  himself,  who  have  learned  to  our  sur- 
prise that  much  of  what  our  teachers  had 
told  us  about  the  insufficiency  of  the  French 
272 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

language  to  the  expression  of  high  poetic 
thought  and  sentiment  was  due  to  mere  ig- 
norance on  their  part,  a  doubt  has  perhaps 
come  more  than  once  whether  Taine  was  not 
partly  justified  in  his  preference  for  Musset 
over  Tennyson  —  a  doubt  which  the  perusal 
of  the  four  volumes  named  above  does  not 
altogether  allay.  For  from  contrasting  the 
lives  of  the  two  poets,  one  proceeds  inevi- 
tably to  the  weighing  and  contrasting  of 
their  works. 

With  regard  to  the  memoir  of  Tennyson 
little  need  be  said.  Since  its  appearance  in 
October  last  there  has  been  no  such  person- 
age as  an  "  indolent  reviewer  "  to  be  found 
in  the  land.  The  critics  seem  to  have  gone 
down  like  ninepins  before  it,  and  they  are 
still  lying  in  a  state  of  prostrate  and  hardly 
becoming  adulation.  Could  the  Laureate 
have  foreseen  their  postures,  he  would  prob- 
ably have  burned  more  letters  than  he  did, 
and  would  have  been  still  more  determined 
to  have  his  poem,  The  Gleam,  received  as 
the  sole  authorized  memorial  of  his  life.  The 
gift  of  prescience  was  not  his,  however,  and 
so  we  are  left  to  wonder  whether  the  reading 
world  of  a  hundred  years  from  now  will  really 
peruse  with  rapture  the  letters  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria, the  reminiscences  of  Mr.  Tyndall  and 
18  273 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

other  famous  contemporaries,  the  mere  social 
notes  of  Mr.  Lowell  and  his  peers,  the  ex- 
tracts from  private  diaries,  that  make  up  a 
large  portion  of  these  volumes  which  the 
critics  have  already  placed  by  the  side  of 
Boswell's  Johnson.  But  whatever  our  con- 
clusions as  to  the  mortality  or  immortality  of 
this  memoir  in  its  present  bulky  shape,  we 
should  surely  be  blind  if  we  failed  to  recog- 
nize the  essential  nobility  of  the  life  por- 
trayed. The  man  whom  the  English  have 
been  extolling,  while  their  French  neighbors 
have  been  picking  his  great  rival  to  pieces, 
was  obviously  a  noble  and  conscientious 
artist  in  verse,  a  poet  fully  impressed  with 
the  sacred  nature  of  his  calling,  a  critic  of 
remarkably  acute  powers,  a  widely  read  and 
observant  student  of  nature  and  of  men,  an 
intensely  spiritual  seeker  after  God,  a  loyal 
patriot  and  friend  —  in  short,  an  ideal  char- 
acter of  a  high  and  attractive  type. 

Such  was  the  man  —  except  perhaps  in  his 
role  of  critic  —  that  had  stood  out  behind  the 
Poems ;  such  is  the  man  that  stands  out  be- 
hind the  Biography.  But  neither  the  poetry 
nor  the  memoir  proves  Tennyson  to  have 
been  the  profound  seer  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  other  contemporaries  thought  him,  nor 
does  either  source  of  information  disprove 
274 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

the  charge  that  he  was  morbidly  sensitive, 
and  hence  unable  to  give  full  expression 
to  the  lyric  passion  that  was  a  fundamental 
constituent  of  his  nature.  It  is  in  view  of  this 
charge  that  the  destruction  of  the  letters  to 
Arthur  Hallam  and  to  Miss  Sellwood  before 
she  became  Lady  Tennyson  is  so  much  to  be 
regretted.  Whatever  the  admirers  of  Maud 
may  say,  the  Tennyson  that  we  know  through 
his  poems  after  1 842  and  through  the  memoir 
is  rather  the  poet  of  idyll,  elegy,  and  artificial 
epic  than  the  poet  of  lyrical  passion,  whether 
of  love  or  grief.  That  he  was  profoundly 
passionate  we  have  reason  to  believe  from 
the  evidence  of  friends,  from  some  of  the  early 
poems — perhaps  FitzGerald's  well-known  in- 
ability to  appreciate  fully  the  later  poems  came 
from  his  missing  the  adequate  expression  of 
this  passion,  and  not  from  the  fact,  ungener- 
ously urged  by  the  present  Lord  Tennyson, 
that  he  did  not  see  the  faulted  verses  in 
manuscript  —  and  from  lyric  outbursts  in  the 
long  roll  of  poems  that  succeeded  the  volumes 
of  1842.  But,  whatever  the  cause,  the  at- 
mosphere about  the  matured  poet  did  not 
furnish  sufficient  oxygen  for  the  flame  of  his 
passion,  and  it  flickered  and  burned  low. 
Yet  it  was  diverted  rather  than  suppressed, 
and  it  kindled  his  other  poetic  powers.  He 
275 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

became  the  artist  passionate  for  perfection, 
he  searched  the  ages  for  noble  characters, 
and  imparted  some  passion  to  them,  his  spir- 
ituality and  his  patriotism  glowed  brighter 
with  the  years,  even  the  pessimistic  utterances 
of  his  latter  days  had  a  certain  lurid  quality 
about  them.  So  at  least  it  seems  to  some  of 
us,  and  prizing  though  we  do  what  he  has 
chosen  to  give  us,  we  miss  both  in  the  poetry 
and  in  the  life  that  lyrical  expression  of 
Tennyson's  innermost  nature  which  he  would 
surely  have  given  us  had  he  been  a  contem- 
porary of  Byron's  or  a  countryman  of  Mus- 
set's.  It  is  vain  to  tell  us  that  he  took  the 
more  dignified  course,  that  he  had  a  right  to 
keep  his  deepest  and  most  sacred  emotions 
hidden  from  the  world ;  it  is  vain  to  quote  to 
us  from  Leconte  de  Lisle's  fine  sonnet,  Les 
Montreurs,  which  derives  its  interest  from 
the  very  quality  its  author  denounces  in 
others.  If  Tennyson  had  not  shown  us  that 
his  real  strength  or  a  great  part  of  his  real 
strength  lay  in  the  lyrical  expression  of  his 
passion,  we  should  be  content  to  praise  him 
as  we  do  reflective  poets  like  Wordsworth; 
but  having  given  us  reason  to  believe  that  he 
had  in  him  the  fire  that  burned  in  Sappho 
and  Catullus,  in  Shakspere,  Byron,  and  Mus- 
set,  he  disappoints  us  by  rarely  or  never 
276 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

breaking  into  flame,  either  in  his  verse  or  in 
the  biography  which  his  son  has  constructed 
according  to  his  wishes.  "  From  him  that 
hath  not,  even  that  which  he  hath  shall  be 
taken  away."  Are  we  unreasonable  in  our 
demands  upon  Tennyson?  Ought  we  to  be 
contented  with  the  noble  work  he  has  given 
us?  Perhaps  so;  yet  a  few  of  us  at  least, 
after  reading  the  memoir  and  going  back  to 
the  poems,  have  found  ourselves  asking  for  pre- 
cisely what  Taine  demanded  over  thirty  years 
ago,  and  what  he  averred  he  found  in  Alfred  de 
Musset.  But  this  leads  us  naturally  to  take 
account  of  our  two  yellow  French  twelvemos, 
which  show  up  so  pitifully  in  appearance  be- 
side the  royal  English  octavos. 

It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  the  Pari- 
sian public  has  been  for  the  past  eighteen 
months  as  busy  discussing  the  relations  of 
Musset  and  George  Sand  as  the  English- 
speaking  public  has  been  for  a  shorter  period 
with  regard  to  the  secluded  life  of  the  recluse 
of  Farringford  —  for  they  have  a  multitude 
of  things  to  talk  about  in  Paris  —  but  it  is 
certainly  true  that  the  famous  love-story  has 
attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention,  and  that 
Sandists  and  Mussetists  have  been  waging  a 
new  Battle  of  the  Books,  or  else  floundering 
once  more  in  that  old  Slough  of  Scandals 
277 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

which  Bunyan  forgot  to  describe  for  us. 
M.  Marieton's  book,  for  example,  might  seem 
to  be  hurled  at  his  Sandist  adversaries  from 
out  the  very  midst  of  the  slough,  for  while 
giving  a  history  of  the  whole  love-affair  it 
devotes  itself  mainly  to  answering  in  the 
affirmative  one  question  important  to  the 
controversy  —  viz.,  Was  George  Sand  un- 
faithful to  Musset  during  the  latter's  illness 
at  Venice,  or  was  she  not?  An  affirmative 
answer  to  this  unsavory  question  not  only 
convicts  George  Sand  of  deliberate  falsifica- 
tion, but  also  convicts  her,  author  though 
she  be,  of  La  Mare  au  Diable,  of  being  far 
looser  in  her  actions  than  that  Juliette  of  hers 
who  went  back  to  her  scoundrel  lover,  Leone 
Leoni.  M.  Marieton  having  made  an  affirm- 
ative answer  based  on  various  hitherto  un- 
edited documents,  it  is,  of  course,  in  order 
for  a  Sandist  like  M.  Rocheblave  to  call  the 
authenticity  of  the  documents  into  question, 
although  one  could  wish  that  he  had  better 
grounds  for  doing  so  than  the  mere  fact  that 
they  are  contradicted  by  certain  statements 
of  George  Sand,  a  not  uninterested  party. 
Indeed,  throughout  this  whole  controversy  a 
partisan  lack  of  care  in  weighing  evidence  is 
as  apparent  as  it  is  in  literary  controversies 
with  which  we  are  more  familiar  —  for  exam- 
278 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

pie,  that  which  is  continually  being  waged 
over  the  life  of  Shelley. 

It  would  not  be  profitable  to  undertake  a 
minute  analysis  either  of  M.  Marieton's  book 
or  of  George  Sand's  passionate  letters.  The 
details  of  the  affair  may  be  left  to  those  who 
care  to  go  to  the  sources;  its  outlines  are 
well  known  and  may  be  easily  recalled.  We 
all  remember  that  by  the  spring  of  1833 
Madame  Dudevant  had  broken  with  Jules 
Sandeau,  and  was  lying  in  the  trough  of  the 
sea  of  romanticism  waiting  to  be  washed 
higher  by  its  on-coming  waves.  With  her 
inherited  passions,  with  her  artistic  instincts, 
with  her  banal  experience  of  married  life,  and 
with  her  stimulating  contact  with  literary 
success  and  the  romantic  fervor  of  the  times, 
she  had  no  chance  to  escape  a  psychological 
crisis  of  the  most  acute  kind.  A  similar  fate 
was  impending  over  Alfred  de  Musset.  The 
normal  debauchery  of  an  idle,  aristocratic 
youth  about  town,  the  easy  success  obtained 
with  the  Cenacle  by  his  Andalusian  verses, 
could  not  satisfy  the  most  passionate  heart 
in  Europe  now  that  Byron  was  dead.  He, 
too,  must  have  his  psychological  crisis,  and  it 
would  be  more  acute  than  George  Sand's. 
Whether  Ste.  Beuve  perceived  all  this  when 
he  played  the  part  of  uncle  to  the  modern 
279 


TENNYSON  AND  MUSSET 

Cressida,  and  tried  to  bring  the  romantic  pair 
together  is  not  clear ;  but  it  is  at  least  certain 
that  from  the  time  they  first  met,  in  June, 
1833,  the  more  inflammable  heart  was  set 
aglow,  and  that  the  more  indurated  one 
speedily  responded.  Then,  while  Tennyson 
was  in  the  flush  of  his  grief  for  Arthur 
Hallam,  came  the  seclusion  of  the  quai 
Malaquais,  the  honeymoon  —  for  such  the 
infatuated  lovers  really  deemed  it  —  at 
Fontainebleau,  so  well  described  in  the 
Confession  and  in  Elle  et  Lui,  then  the 
fateful  journey  to  Italy. 

The  land  of  lovers  had  known  few  more 
passionately  sincere  for  the  time  being  than 
these  two,  and  it  had  known  few  fates  more 
really  tragic  than  that  which  awaited  them. 
For  their  passions,  raging  outside  the  bounds 
of  law,  moral  as  well  as  physical,  had  to  rise 
to  the  height  like  waves  and  then  break. 
Musset's  broke  first.  His  nerves  were 
strained  from  his  recent  life  of  dissipation, 
and  his  colossal  amour-propre  revolted  from 
the  self-centred  independence  of  a  companion 
who  could  write  for  hours  without  taking 
note  of  his  presence.  He  ruptured  the  alli- 
ance by  harsh  words,  and  probably  by  acts 
which  he  lived  to  regret  and  despise.  Then 
came  the  illness  at  Venice,  the  appearance  of 
280 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

Dr.  Pietro  Pagello  upon  the  scene,  the  faith- 
lessness of  George  Sand,  the  fantastic  attempt 
of  Musset  to  reconcile  himself  to  a  manage  a 
trois,  and  finally  his  departure  for  Paris  a 
worn-out  wreck  of  body,  mind,  and  soul. 
Nemesis  had  attached  herself  to  him,  seem- 
ing to  forget  George  Sand  left  behind  in  un- 
romantic  relations  with  Pagello.  But  Nemesis 
was  not  really  forgetful.  She  presided  over 
the  letters,  passionate  on  both  sides,  though 
with  that  curious  maternal  note  on  the 
woman's  part  that  one  finds  never  leaving 
her,  which  were  sent  over  the  Alps ;  she 
presided  over  the  undignified  return  journey 
made  by  George  Sand  with  Pagello  in  leash ; 
she  presided  over  the  renewals  of  intimacy, 
the  swift  partings,  the  letters,  the  private 
journals,  the  tears  and  wailings  of  the  re- 
mainder of  that  eventful  year,  1834;  and 
finally  she  has  presided  ever  since  over  the 
literary  exploitation  of  the  whole  frantic  epi- 
sode, over  the  quarrels  raised  by  the  publi- 
cation of  Elle  et  Lui  and  Lui  et  Elle, 
and  the  contentions  of  the  Sandists  and 
Mussetists  of  the  present  day. 

I  have  no  desire  to  incur  her  displeasure 

by  going  too  deeply  into  these  unpleasant 

matters   myself,  but  there  are  at  least  two 

points,   one    specific    and    one   general,  that 

281 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

ought  to  be  touched  on.  The  first  is  how  far 
M.  Marieton's  anti-Sand  position  is  tenable. 
He  has  published  a  journal  of  Dr.  Pagello 
himself,  an  incriminating  romantic  fragment 
by  George  Sand,  entitled  En  Moree,  by 
means  of  which,  it  is  claimed,  she  made  her 
love  known  to  the  physician,  and  a  number 
of  interesting  and  valuable  letters  of  Musset 
chosen  from  the  correspondence  still  some- 
what jealously  guarded  by  the  poet's  sister. 
In  addition  he  gives  two  drafts  in  Paul  de 
Musset's  handwriting  of  the  alleged  account 
dictated  by  Alfred  of  the  now  famous  "  vision  " 
of  the  sick-room  at  Venice  and  its  conse- 
quences, which  readers  of  Lui  et  Elle  have 
not  forgotten.  Judged  impartially,  these  docu- 
ments, if  genuine,  are  the  most  damaging 
testimony  yet  brought  against  George  Sand's 
character.  As  has  been  intimated,  doubt  is 
thrown  upon  their  authenticity  by  her  friends, 
but  although  M.  Marieton  has  not  given  us 
all  the  information  that  could  be  desired 
about  them,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  journal 
of  Pagello  (who  was  living  at  a  great  old  age 
when  Marieton  wrote  but  has  since  died)  can 
be  thrown  out  of  court,  and  if  that  stays, 
the  fragment  En  Moree,  George  Sand's  gage 
d'amotir,  stays  also.  Indeed,  there  are  a  pri- 
ori reasons  why  it  should  stay,  for  Pagello 
282 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

could  read  French  fluently,  but  spoke  it 
poorly,  while  George  Sand  was  just  picking 
up  Italian.  A  few  romantic  pages  in  her 
facile  style  would,  therefore,  be  the  most 
natural  and  effectual  means  she  could  choose 
for  a  confession  of  so  delicate  a  nature. 

As  for  M.  Mari^ton's  reliance  upon  the 
truth  of  Paul  de  Musset's  sick-room  scene, 
it  is  only  in  keeping  with  his  confidence  in 
the  latter's  entire  defence  of  his  brother. 
M.  Marieton,  relying,  it  would  seem,  upon 
Madame  Lardin  de  Musset,  and  ignoring  the 
general  verdict  with  regard  to  Paul's  charac- 
ter, declares  that  the  latter's  novel  sweats 
truth  (sue  la  veritf]  where  we  should  prefer 
to  say  that  it  perspires  dulness.  In  this 
frank  credence  in  Paul  de  Musset  he  is  cer- 
tainly bold,  but  if  the  dictated  memoranda 
can  be  shown  by  examination  of  watermarks, 
etc.,  to  bear  the  date  assigned  them,  Decem- 
ber, 1852,  nearly  four  years  and  a  half  before 
Alfred  de  Musset's  death,  they  are  certainly 
documents  that  cannot  be  lightly  treated. 
They  are  supported,  too,  by  a  small  piece  of 
corroborative  evidence  that  has  not,  perhaps, 
been  sufficiently  noticed.  Alfred  de  Musset's 
Confession  d'un  Enfant  du  Siecle,  in  which 
he  chivalrously  takes  all  the  blame  on  him- 
self and  absolves  George  Sand,  is  frequently 
283 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

quoted  as  an  authority  for  the  fidelity  of  its 
description  of  the  Fontainebleau  expedition 
—  for  example,  by  Madame  Arvede  Barine  in 
her  interesting  sketch  of  Musset  —  but  is  not 
generally  relied  on  as  an  authority  for  Paul 
de  Musset's  version  of  the  sick-room  incident. 
Yet  the  single  tea-cup  drunk  out  of  by  the 
two  lovers  (George  Sand  and  Pagello),  which 
figures  in  Lui  et  Elle,  figures  also  in  the 
Confession.  Was  it  one  of  the  touches 
that  made  George  Sand  weep  when  she  read 
Alfred's  novel?  And  what  have  the  Sandists 
done  with  this  incriminating  tea -cup?  The 
answer  comes  naturally  enough  —  they  have 
swallowed  it;  or  else,  speaking  seriously,  we 
may  suppose  that  they  infer  that  Paul  de 
Musset  borrowed  the  tea-cup  scene  from 
Alfred,  and  then  embellished  it  in  his  own 
peculiarly  exasperating  manner. 

The  second  point  that  must  be  touched  on 
is  the  question  what  possible  value  can  at- 
tach to  books  treating  of  such  an  unpleasant 
episode.  Nearly  all  the  reviewers  have  ex- 
patiated on  the  delight  they  experienced 
when  they  found  the  Tennyson  volumes  free 
from  scandal,  so  that  one  is  left  to  infer  that 
unless  they  were  indulging  in  cant,  British 
and  American  critics  are  above  all  vulgar 
curiosity,  and  would  prefer  to  draw  a  veil 
284 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

over  the  inner  history  of  literary  men,  except 
when,  as  in  Tennyson's  case,  there  is  practi- 
cally nothing  to  hide.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  such  is  not  the  French  view,  and  that 
no  one  who  has  studied  his  Ste.  Beuve  will 
continue  to  throw  his  influence  on  the  side  of 
British  cant.  We  shall  do  well  to  wish  that 
our  literary  heroes  and  heroines  would  lead 
clean  lives,  but  if  they  will  not,  and  we  pro- 
pose to  be  their  critics,  we  must  follow  them 
at  least  to  the  banks  of  the  Slough  of  Scan- 
dals. From  this  point  of  view,  then,  the 
books  we  are  considering  should  have  been 
published,  and  should  be  read  by  all  serious 
students  of  George  Sand  and  of  Alfred  de 
Musset.  That  they  will  be  read  by  many 
who  are  not  serious  students  is,  of  course, 
matter  for  regret ;  but  so  is  religious  hypoc- 
risy, and  surely  no  one  would  suggest  that 
we  should  do  away  with  all  religions  in 
order  to  put  an  end  to  the  propagation  of 
Tartuffes. 

But  the  documents  contained  in  these 
books  have  claims  to  be  regarded  as  some- 
thing far  higher  than  mere  evidence  in  a 
famous  case  of  scandal.  The  letters  that 
passed  between  the  two  lovers  are  among  the 
most  intense  ever  written,  and  are  not  merely 
precious  sources  of  information  for  all 
285 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

students  of  Romanticism,  but  also  lyrical  out- 
bursts of  two  passionate  hearts  that  must  be 
ranked  in  the  future  but  little  below  the  in- 
comparable Nuits  of  the  more  poetical  and 
sorely  strained  of  the  two  protagonists  of 
this  drama  of  suffering.  Here,  indeed,  we 
find  the  best  excuse  for  the  publication  of  all 
the  volumes  and  essays  that  have  dealt  with 
this  remarkable  episode.  Out  of  them  some 
anthologist,  perhaps,  still  unborn,  will  be  able 
to  cull  a  volume  of  letters,  poems,  pages  of 
description  and  extracts  from  private  journals 
that  will  be  a  source  of  delight  to  all  who 
care  for  the  literature  of  passion,  and  will 
serve  to  make  the  memory  of  Musset  and 
George  Sand,  as  the  former  predicted,  as 
abiding  as  that  of  Abelard  and  Helo'fse.  With 
the  lapse  of  years  the  grosser  features  of  the 
story  will  be  more  or  less  eliminated,  and  the 
flame  of  passion,  which  in  Musset's  case  at 
least  was  never  really  extinguished,  will  burn 
clearly  for  all  time.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible 
to  prove  such  statements  as  these,  for  the 
charge  of  romantic  extravagance  and  insin- 
cerity may  be  brought  against  the  lovers,  and 
such  a  charge  can  never  be  thoroughly 
refuted.  Documents  relative  to  any  great 
passion  will  always  be  judged  favorably  or 
unfavorably,  according  to  the  capacity  of 
286 


TENNYSON   AND   MUSSET 

the  critic  or  reader  to  understand  or  experi- 
ence passion.  Shakspere's  Sonnets  have 
caused  some  people  to  wonder  why  he 
wrote  them,  and  have  been  held  by  other 
people  not  to  refer  to  any  specific  passions  at 
all.  Still  one  may  at  least  cite  a  few  burning 
passages  from  these  letters  that  will  help  to 
indicate  the  perfervid  character  of  the  whole 
correspondence. 

Here  is  how  Musset,  on  April  3Oth,  1834, 
could  write  to  the  woman  who  had  abandoned 
him: 

"  O  mon  enfant  cherie,  lorsque  tu  m'aimais,  m'as- 
tu  jamais  trompe  ?  Quel  reproche  ai-je  jamais  eu 
a  te  faire  pendant  sept  mois  que  je  t'ai  vue,  jour  par 
jour?  Et  quel  est  done  le  lache  miserable  qui 
appelle  perfide  la  femme  qui  1'estime  assez  pour 
1'avertir  que  son  heure  est  venue  ?  Le  mensonge, 
voilci  ce  que  j'abhorre,  ce  qui  me  rend  le  plus 
defiant  des  hommes,  peut-etre  le  plus  malheu- 
reux.  Mais  tu  es  aussi  sincere  que  tu  es  noble  et 
orgueilleuse." 

Again  he  writes  later  in  the  year,  after 
relations  have  been  renewed,  only  to  bring 
anguish  to  both,  and  when  he  feels  that  they 
must  have  one  final  interview  and  part : 

"  Que  ce  ne  soit  pas  1'adieu  de  monsieur  Un  tel  et 
de  madame  Une  telle.     Que  ce  soient  deux  ames 
287 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

qui  ont  souffert,  deux  intelligences  souffrantes,  deux 
aigles  blesses  qui  se  rencontrent  dans  le  del,  et  qui 
echangent  un  cri  de  douleur  avant  de  se  se'parer 
pour  1'eternite." 

Was  not  the  man  who  could  write  thus 
justified  in  writing  later: 

"La  posterite  r£petera  nos  noms  comme  ceux  de 
ces  amants  immortels  qui  n'en  ont  plus  qu'un  a  eux 
deux,  comme  Romeo  et  Juliette,  comme  Helo'ise  et 
Abelard." 

One  citation  from  George  Sand's  equally 
moving  letters  must  suffice.  Let  us  take  it 
from  the  highly  wrought  epistle  of  June  I5th, 

1834: 

"  Vois  combien  tu  te  trompais  quand  tu  te  croyais 
use  par  les  plaisirs  et  abruti  par  l'exp£rience  !  Vois 
que  ton  corps  s'est  renouvele'  et  que  ton  ame  sort  de 
sa  chrysalide.  Si,  dans  son  engourdissement,  elle 
a  produit  de  si  beaux  poemes,  quels  sentiments, 
quelles  iddes  en  sortiront  maintenant  qu'elle  a 
ddploy£  ses  ailes.  Aime  et  e'cris,  c'est  ta  vocation, 
mon  ami.  Monte  vers  Dieu  sur  les  rayons  de  ton 
ge'nie  et  envoie  ta  muse  sur  la  terre  raconter  aux 
hommes  les  mysteres  de  1'amour  et  de  la  foi." 

Alfred     de    Musset     took    his     "  brother 
George  "  at  her  word,  and  the  next  two  years 
were  the  most  fruitful  of  his  life.     But  how 
288 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

does  the  work  produced  under  such  circum- 
stances, together  with  that  of  his  youth  and 
of  his  sterile  later  years,  compare  with  that 
of  his  more  fortunate  British  contemporary  — 
for  to  compare  the  lives  of  the  two  men  further 
is  surely  unnecessary?  Putting  to  one  side 
the  delightful  comedies  and  contes,  have  we 
any  right  to  share  Taine's  preference  for 
Musset's  poetry  as  compared  with  that  of 
Tennyson?  Obviously  not,  if  Tennyson's 
admirers,  like  Mr.  Aldrich  and  Dr.  Van  Dyke, 
are  justified  in  maintaining  that  their  favorite 
must  rank  next  to  Shakspere  and  Milton  in 
the  hierarchy  of  the  English  poets.  If  the 
Idylls  of  the  King  be  a  sustained  and  noble 
epic  rather  than  the  "  boudoir  epic  "  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  finds  them  to  be ;  if  In 
Memoriam  be  really  the  most  profound  poem 
of  the  century  rather  than  an  unequal  series  of 
elegiac  verses  appealing  to  an  over-emotional 
and  not  very  thoughtful  public  ;  if  Maud  fails 
in  any  way  to  suggest  a  sensational  novel,  and 
The  Princess  is  a  work  of  perfect,  not  hybrid 
art,  then  these  poems,  together  with  the 
ballads,  the  idylls  of  English  life,  the  mono- 
logues, and  the  wonderful  songs,  are  clearly 
enough  to  set  Tennyson  far  above  the 
author  of  the  Nuits,  the  Letter  to  Lamartine, 
and  the  Stanzas  to  Malibran.  If,  however, 
19  289 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

Tennyson's  longer  poems  are  to  be  forgotten 
save  for  selected  passages,  and  if  his  reputa- 
tion is  to  rest  on  the  shorter  poems  in  his  early 
manner  and  on  the  tradition  of  his  artistic 
command  of  rhythm  and  diction ;  if,  further- 
more, the  world  that  is  now  sated  with  com- 
posite art  renews  its  youth  through  some 
stirring  crisis,  and  once  more  demands  passion 
as  a  primary  element  of  literature,  will  the 
bard  of  Aldworth  and  Farringford  hold  his 
own  against  the  poet  of  the  streets  of  Paris? 
Perhaps  he  may,  in  spite  of  all  that  may  be 
said  about  the  suppression  of  his  passion  and 
about  the  deficiencies  of  his  longer  poems. 
Should  the  world  come  once  more  to  demand 
passion,  it  will  probably  be  Byron  that  will 
eclipse  Tennyson,  not  Alfred  de  Musset, 
whose  star  will  nevertheless  rise  splendidly  in 
the  poetic  heavens.  For,  after  all,  Musset's 
strictly  poetical  work,  great  as  it  is  at  its  best, 
is  not,  it  would  seem,  sufficient  in  amount  to 
balance  that  of  Tennyson,  even  if  the  latter 
poet  is  shorn  of  half  his  present  glory  by 
envious  time.  But  leaving  the  question  of  the 
relative  position  of  the  two  poets  aside,  it  is 
certainly  permissible  for  those  who  care  for 
the  lyrical  expression  of  intense  passion  to 
maintain  that  they  find  little  or  nothing  in 
Tennyson  that  takes  the  place  for  them  of 
290 


TENNYSON  AND   MUSSET 

Musset's  chief  poems.  If  they  are  pressed  to 
point  out  a  passage  illustrating  the  kind  of 
passion  they  demand  from  Tennyson,  but  do 
not  find,  they  may  quote  these  lines  from  the 
Nuit  de  Mai : 

"  J'ai  vu  le  temps  ou  ma  jeunesse 
Sur  mes  levres  e"tait  sans  cesse 
Prete  a  chanter  comme  un  oiseau  ; 
Mais  j'ai  souffert  un  dur  martyre, 
Et  le  moins  que  j'en  pourrais  dire, 
Si  je  1'essayais  sur  ma  lyre, 
La  briserait  comme  un  roseau." 

"  Here,"  they  may  say,  "  is  the  '  lyric  cry ' 
which  we  have  missed  more  or  less  in  British 
poetry  since  the  days  of  Byron,"  and  if  they 
are  pressed  to  describe  still  further  the  voice 
that  has  moved  them  so  profoundly,  they  may 
reply,  quoting  the  Stanzas  to  Malibran : 

"  C'est  cette  voix  du  coeur  qui  seule  au  coeur  arrive, 
Que  nul  autre,  apres  toi,  ne  nous  rendra  jamais." 


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